Africa’s leading industrialist, Aliko Dangote, has disclosed plans to invest an additional $50 billion across Africa after committing more than $25 billion to existing businesses.
He said the next phase of the Dangote Group’s expansion would combine massive industrial investment with a deliberate opening of its businesses to African ownership through the capital markets.
The declaration came in Nairobi on the eve of the groundbreaking of the Dangote East Africa Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals, scheduled for today, September 30, in Lamu, Kenya.
Speaking during a chat with the Chief Executive Officer of the Nairobi Securities Exchange, Frank Mwiti, at the “Dangote Petroleum Refinery IPO High Level Investor Engagement” organised by the NSE, Dangote said Africa could no longer afford “baby steps” if it intended to compete globally.
“We have already invested more than $25 billion, but right now, we are going ahead to invest an additional $50 billion.
“We want to create and generate wealth for Africans, to make sure that we defend our markets. And the only way to defend the market is not to take baby steps. It’s better we do big scale,” Dangote said.
The groundbreaking will proceed against the backdrop of a legal challenge over portions of the proposed project land in Lamu.
The Malindi Environment and Land Court has ordered that the status quo be maintained on the disputed land until October 14 following a petition by 133 residents asserting rights over the property, although the court did not stop Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony.
Dangote, who said he learnt of the development from a media report shortly after arriving in Kenya, described such disputes as part of the realities of executing major projects.
President Williams Ruto’s chief economic advisor, David Ndii, disclosed that the Lamu project grew out of discussions among African policymakers, financiers and business leaders on how to deploy the continent’s natural resources for industrialisation rather than extraction.
According to Ndii, those discussions identified petroleum refining as one of the strategic opportunities for East Africa and led to engagement with Dangote, President William Ruto, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and other regional leaders.
He said a closed-door meeting in April examined an addressable East African market for finished petroleum products estimated at 20 million metric tonnes annually, potentially rising to 30 million tonnes.
At the conclusion of the discussions, Ndii recalled that Ruto distilled the proposition into three questions: Was there a market for the products? Was African capital available to finance the investment? And was there an entrepreneur with proven capacity to execute a refinery of that scale? With the answers in the affirmative, the Kenyan President asked: “Why would we fail?” Ndii said the answer in the room was equally emphatic: “We cannot fail.”
The East African expansion is also being tied to a broader push by Dangote to change who owns Africa’s biggest businesses.
Dangote told investors that the ongoing public offer of Dangote Petroleum Refinery was not primarily driven by a need to raise cash but by a desire to democratise wealth and allow ordinary Africans to participate in the prosperity created by the continent’s industrialisation.
“It’s not because we need the money. No. It’s because we want to share this prosperity with everybody,” he said. “The real purpose is for us to democratise wealth-making.”
He disclosed that the Group was prepared to progressively release more equity in its businesses as investor demand grows.
Credit to our Media Partner DailyTrust .
