Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, plans to expand his company as well as deal with the shortage of dollars in its home market (Nigeria) by investing $3.8 billion in sugar and rice and $800 million in dairy to increase production in the next three years.
The Dangote group is set to increase its production of sugar to 1.5 million metric tons a year by 2020 from 100,000 tons now and is seeking to add 1 million tons of rice, Edwin Devakumar, executive director at Dangote’s industries unit, said on Tuesday in an interview in Lagos, Ngeria. The company also plans to have 50,000 cattle producing 500 million litres of milk a year by 2019, he said.
The company will finance the projects through “internal resources or equity funding” and loans from banks and export-credit agencies, Devakumar said. The funds will be used mainly to procure “farm-development equipment” as well as sugar and rice mills, he said.
