Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has reiterated the need for economic diversification as the key to wealth creation in Nigeria.
The renown businessman also highlighted some of the many ways his Dangote Group businesses are helping to reduce the country’s over-dependence on importation.
Alhaji Dangote made these latest remarks over the weekend in Lagos when he was visited by some Asian business executives in Lagos.
Addressing them, he stated that his deep interest in industrialisation and economic diversification was spurred by the need to drastically cut down on the money “wasted” annually all in the name of goods importation.
He also stated that he believes in the Government’s strategic effort to refocus the economy to a more export-oriented; a situation he said has encouraged his foray into agribusiness.
Dangote Group’s efforts and contributions
Meanwhile, Mr Dangote also highlighted some of the ways his businesses are contributing to the economic agenda, noting that the ultimate goal is to first ensure self-sufficiency and have enough to export.
To this end, the Dangote Group has been investing a lot in agriculture whilst promoting industrialisation. Already, this is helping to save Nigeria a lot of money in foreign exchange.
“We have invested massively in rice, sugar, dairy products, and tomatoes. Our rice-out grower scheme will produce rice by next year that reduces our rice import to nearly zero because Nigeria imports more than half of the rice it consumes.
“We are producing the raw materials needed in our factories. In the sugar sector, we developed a sugar backward integration project plan targeted at the production of 1.5MT/PA from various sites across Nigeria, in the next 10 years. We have an out-grower scheme; enough paddy rice will be grown and harvested for processing. Some 20,000 outgrowers expected to produce an average of 180,000 tonnes of paddy rice.” -Dangote
The Dangote Group is one of Nigeria’s biggest companies which is playing a huge role in Nigeria’s manufacturing sector. Businesses under the group include Dangote Cement, Dangote Flour Mills, Dangote Sugar and more. These are all leaders in the industrial goods and fast and moving consumer goods sector.
If Dangote invests big in agriculture there’ll be no agriculture left for the masses.
This is very untrue.
It will only improve food security and create a new farm employment group different from the peasant hoe and cutlass back bending farming population that is already dying