Africa’s richest man and President, Dangote Industries, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has fashioned out a plan by his company to add 12,000 megawatt of electricity to Nigeria’s sorry power grid.
He also announced that his organization will be selling foreign exchange (forex) to the central bank.
Dangote disclosed these in Lagos on Monday at the Nigerian Economic Summit organised by Economist Events, an arm of The Economist of London.
“Our gas project would have our gas pipelines on the seabed. The output should be able to provide about 12,000MW of power. We see a lot of transformation when we are done with most of our projects by 2018″, Dangote said.
“We are looking at a situation where by 2020, we will be the one selling FX to the CBN. Our projects are mainly import substitution. We are working to be self-sufficient to grow about a million tonnes of rice over the next five years.
“We have 15 countries in the ECOWAS community that are duty-free. The export market is big and profitable if you have the capacity. Players in the manufacturing (sector) should be encouraged to export if they have the capacity. We must also meet local consumption.”
The billionaire businessman also said the slump in global oil price presents an opportunity for Nigeria to finally diversify.
“This is the right moment to pursue the diversification of the economy, which we have been talking about. I know that once oil gets back to $80 per barrel, we will go back to the same misbehaviour.
“But I think this is the right time for that. Government must come up with the right policy, because if we don’t do it now, we may not do it. But low prices do not mean doom. In 1998-1999, the price of oil was $9. What we need to do is just to block the leakages and pursue diversification”, he said.
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