Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is atmosphere his sights on an heroic growth of his $3 billion fertilizer plant, with a daring vision: to full Africa’s reliance on imported fertilizer inside of correct 40 months.
From his execrable in Lagos, Nigeria, the billionaire industrialist believes Africa can flip the script on food insecurity and foreign alternate woes by simply producing what it desires.
The Dangote Fertilizer plant, already Africa’s greatest, sits on a huge 500-hectare web web site in Ibeju Lekki. It produces urea, a key input in farming with an annual potential of three million metric tonnes, twice what Nigeria alone for the time being desires. Nonetheless even with that scale, Dangote says it’s finest the origin.
“In the following 40 months, Africa will no longer import fertilizer from anywhere,” he acknowledged at the most up-to-date Afreximbank annual assembly in Abuja.
That’s no longer correct discuss. The plant is for the time being working at about half of its stout potential, suggesting there’s primary headroom for hiss. And Dangote isn’t correct having a undercover agent at manufacturing, he’s also pondering finance.
A conceivable listing on the Nigerian Trade (NGX) also can free up billions in recent funding, giving the firm the muscle to scale sooner, give a elevate to its logistics network, and tap into global export markets.
Why this matters for Africa
Africa imports over six million metric tonnes of fertilizer yearly. That import dependence has made food manufacturing pricey, advanced, and at threat of global shocks, now to no longer mention a drain on treasured foreign reserves.
For international locations cherish Nigeria, where the naira continues to fight against the greenback, the ticket of importing essentials cherish fertilizer adds to inflation and economic instability.
Dangote’s thought is to turn that round no longer finest by flooding the local market with affordable, dwelling-grown urea however also by tailoring fertilizer blends to explicit soil desires all over different regions.
That will also be a sport-changer for smallholder farmers, who usually rely on pricey or poorly matched inputs.
It’s a ways bigger than correct alternate
For Dangote, who leads Africa’s most numerous industrial empire, this mission is bigger than a alternate project, it’s a section of a bigger mission to rebuild the continent’s self-reliance.
By pushing fertilizer manufacturing within the neighborhood, he’s taking map at indubitably one of the crucial muse complications of Africa’s food insecurity: overdependence on foreign provide chains.
With a valuation already sitting at correct over $3 billion and that’s while operating at finest 50%, the fertilizer plant also can personal even bigger numbers as soon as entirely optimized.
And if the NGX listing goes thru, the further capital also can push it beyond even Dangote’s have file-breaking refinery by approach of influence.
