Nigeria’s biggest sugar refiner will spend $1.5 billion over the next five years on farming cane at home, its managing director said, responding to a government drive to make the country less reliant on its oil industry.
Dangote Sugar Refinery, majority-owned by Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, has previously shied away from the risks associated with growing cane itself and preferred to focus on refining imported raw sugar. But progressive hikes in government duties along with tax breaks and other incentives for agricultural development have persuaded it to think again.
“In the next five years, we should be able to produce 1.5 million metric tonnes locally, from around 50,000 metric tonnes now,” Abdullahi Sule told Reuters late on Tuesday on the sidelines of a conference in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
He said the firm, which claims 70 percent of the domestic sugar market, would invest $1.5 billion in the process.
Source: The Nation
