Dangote Group’s owner, Aliko Dangote, has recently announced in an interview with Reuters that his holding of companies will expand their businesses in Zambia, which could become an ideal regional hub due to its strategic geographical position bordering with eight countries.
Dangote’s plan is to launch a number of additional cement and sugar plants across the African continent starting in Zambia, where it already operates a USD 420 million cement plant with a capacity of 3,000 metric tons per day (TPD) in Ndola region.
A second cement plant with similar capacity is under construction as announced in August, 2015 and which doubled Dangote’s investment in Zambia to USD 900 million.
According to Reuters, it was part of a Dangote’s regional plan to shift imports cement to produces, which aims at raising the yearly production by 25 million tons per annum and that is supported by a USD 4.34 billion deal with the Chinese constructor Sinoma International Engineering Co.
The future of the African continent is in infrastructure since currently there is a wide gap in this sector, reason why Dangote Cement is raising its bet in developing cement plans by USD 400 million totaling USD 4.8 billion, explained Aliko Dangote.
Regarding to the sugar business, Dangote seeks to follow the success experienced on shifting cement imports to produces.
To reach this goal, Dangote holds a regional plan to supply Africa with sugar coming from integrated plantations and refinery sites rather than the imported one from Brazil according to Dangote Sugar refinery PLC’s (DSR) 2014 annual report.
Africa is the third largest continent in terms of raw sugar imports totaling USD 6.48 billion as of 2014 and representing 18.11% of the world total imports of this commodity, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Zambia, which does not import the commodity, accounts for 1.25% of the total raw sugar imported in Africa with exports of USD 81.1 million.
Sugar is Zambia’s 8th largest industry representing 1.5% of total exports.
