Dangote to invest $4.6bn in agriculture in 3 years

In a bid to play a positive role in tackling the excruciating shortage of dollars in the economy, Dangote Group has announced plans to invest $3.8 billion in sugar and rice as well as $800 million in dairy production in the next three years.

 

Aliko Dangote, Chairman, Dangote Group

Edwin Devakumar, Executive Director, Dangote, who disclosed this recently in Lagos, said the company will increase its annual production of sugar from the current 100,000 tonnes to 1.5 million metric tonnes by 2020. He added that the company also intends to increase its rice production by 1 million tonnes and add 50,000 cattle that are capable of producing 500 million litres of milk a year by 2019.

A lack of foreign exchange means companies are struggling to pay for imported goods, increasing the burden on local agriculture to meet demand for food from Nigeria’s population of more than 180 million, Devakumar said. “All raw sugar has to be imported today, same thing for flour milling,” he said.

Dangote, whose cement unit is Nigeria’s biggest listed company, has been investing in agriculture as the country’s government seeks to diversify away from oil, which accounts for 90 percent of the nation’s export earnings and the bulk of revenue. The economy, which plunged into its first recession in a quarter-century last year amid falling crude prices, is forecast by the World Bank to expand by 1.2 percent this year.

The company has established Dangote Rice and will list the unit on the Nigerian Stock Exchange “at the appropriate time,” Devakumar said.

Dangote plans to cultivate 350 000 hectares (864 850 acres) of land for sugar cane and add 200 000 hectares for rice, according to the executive director. The company has ordered five plants for sugar milling and 10 for rice from Switzerland to be located in the north of the country, he said.