Africa’s richest man and Chairman Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote has assured that, following laid down plans of the Dangote Refinery, Nigeria as a Nation will have no need to import gasoline from next month.
The business mogul said his refinery has the capacity to supply West Africa’s petrol and diesel needs, and continent’s aviation fuel demand.
Dangote made this announcement at Africa CEO Forum and Annual Summit in Kigali on Friday, while expressing optimism in the transformation of Africa’s energy landscape.
“Right now, Nigeria has no cause to import anything apart from gasoline and by sometime in June, within the next four or five weeks, Nigeria shouldn’t import anything like gasoline, not one drop of litre”.
He also outlined progresses made by the oil company to ensure that Africa as a continent becomes self-sufficient when it comes to the energy sector.
“We have enough gasoline to give to at least the entire West Africa and Central Africa. We have enough aviation fuel to give to entire continent and also export to Brazil and Mexico.
“Today, our polypropylene and our polypropylene will meet the entire demand of Africa today and we are doing base oil, we are doing linear benzyl, which is raw material to produce detergent. We have 1.4 billion people in population, nobody is producing that in Africa. So, all the raw materials for our detergents are imported. We are producing that raw material to make Africa self-sufficient. As I said, give us three or a maximum of four years and Africa will not, I repeat, not import anymore fertilizer from anywhere. We will make Africa self-sufficient in both Potash, Phosphate, and Urea, we are at a three million tonnes and in the next twenty months, we will be at six million tonnes of Urea which is the entire capacity of Egypt. We are getting there”.
The entrepreneur also went further to outline the achievements of the company since the commissioning of the refinery in February.
“We had this dream, just about five years ago and we said we want to move from five billion (dollars) revenue to thirty billion revenue and we made it happen. It is possible and now we have made it happen and now we have actually finished our own refinery.
“Our refinery is quite big. It is something that we believe that Africa needs. If you look at the whole continent, there are only two countries that don’t import petroleum products which is a tragedy. They are only Algeria and Libya. The rest are all importers.
“So, we need to change and make sure that we don’t just go and produce raw materials, we should also produce finished products and create jobs.
“One of the things we also need to know as Africans is that we produce raw materials and export them, when you export raw materials and somebody now keep importing things into your continent and dumping goods, what you are importing is poverty and exporting jobs out. So, we have to change that narrative.
“We just commissioned in February and now we are producing jet fuel, we are producing diesel, and by next month, we will be producing gasoline. What that would do is that we would be taking most of the African crude that are being produced and also be able to supply not only Nigeria, because our capacity is too big for Nigeria, but it would also supply West Africa, Central Africa and also South Africa. We have 650,000 barrels per day, 1 million tonnes of Polypropylene, we have 590,000 carbon black, that is the raw materials ink, dyes and co. We are expanding more. This is the first phase which will start early next year”.
-9News Nigeria.
