Africa’s richest billionaire, Aliko Dangote is consolidating his cement businesses across Africa into one company that will have the scale and resources to compete globally, he told reporters in Tanzania, according to the DailyTrust.
Dangote said plans to do a listing on London and Johannesburg stock exchanges in the near future. “Our intention is to consolidate our cement assets,” he said at a press conference announcing a $600-million cement plant in Tanzania. The plant is one of the 18 Dangote is building across Africa and Nepal, DailyTrust reports.
Dangote Cement listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in October 2010, and it’s now the largest listed company in Nigeria and West Africa, Dangote told reporters. “That was part of our strategy,” he said. “We plan to do a listing in London and Johannesburg in the near future.”
In August, Dangote cement signed a deal valued at $4.34 billion with the Chinese government to build 10 new cement plants across Africa, and one in Nepal. The new projects will have a combined capacity of 25 million metric tonnes per year. By the time they’re completed, Dangote Cement will be capable of producing 81 million metric tonnes of cement per year, Dangote said.
“This will make us one of the largest cement companies in the world,” Dangote said.
Dangote is featured in numerous Forbes-list rankings including No. 67 on a list of the World’s Billionaires in 2015, No. 1 of Africa’s 50 Richest and No. 68 on a list of Powerful People in 2014.
Dangote made his fortune is cement, sugar and flour. He got his start trading commodities more than 30 years ago with a loan from an uncle, Forbes reported. Months before oil prices started plunging in April 2014, Dangote announced $9 billion in financing from a consortium of local and international lenders to build a private oil refinery and fertilizer and petrochemical complex in Nigeria.
In August 2014 he said he would invest $1 billion in commercial rice farming and modern rice mills. His net worth dropped from a reported $25 billion in February 2014 as a result of a weaker Nigerian currency and a drop in demand for cement, according to Forbes.
Nigeria has the highest-priced cement in the world, according to an April report by WatchdogReporters. There has been no foreign direct investment in Nigeria’s cement industry in the past six years, the Cement Producers Association of Nigeria said in a letter to then-President Elect Muhammadu Buhari.
Dangote has cement projects planned or operating in Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe. More are planned, he said.
Dangote isn’t the largest cement producer in Africa. With 50 million tons a year of cement capacity, Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim is the largest producer in continental Africa, according to Bloomberg.
