Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, has signed a multi million dollar deal with a Chinese state owned company Sinoma International Engineering.
Dangote Cement signed contracts worth $4.34 billion on Wednesday with China’s Sinoma International Engineering Co. to build cement plants across Africa, as Nigeria’s largest listed firm expands.
The company, majority-owned by Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, has developed operations outside its dominant Nigerian home market in the last few years.
The plants to be built in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia, with another in Nepal, would add around 25 million tonnes to the company’s existing capacity of around 45 million tonnes, said Dangote.
“The projects are going to be delivered within the next 30 months,” said Dangote, who added he expected production capacity to have reached 70 million tonnes within that timeframe.
“We are not going to stop there. By 2020 we are targeting 100 million tonnes,” he said.
In July, Dangote Cement said the contribution to sales outside Nigeria grew to 14 percent of total revenue by June 30 from 3 percent a year ago.
The company faces intense competition, particularly from main rival Lafarge Africa, which combined its South Africa operation with its publicly traded Nigerian business last year to accelerate growth on the continent.
The President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, who disclosed this at the signing ceremony of the new plants to be constructed in partnership with Sinoma, a construction firm renowned for construction of ultra-modern cement plants worldwide, assured Nigerians that the country would no longer be used as a dumping ground as the company now has the capacity to export 10 million metric tons of cement outside the country.
Dangote is currently in 15 African countries, including Kenya, Niger and Mali, which are new projects.
The new plants for which agreements were signed were on the construction of the following plants: three mmtpa in Nepal, 2.5mmtpa in Ethiopia, three mmtpa in both Kenya 1 and 2; 1.5mmtpa in Zambia; 1.5mmtpa in Senegal, 1.5mmtpa in Niger, 1.5mmtpa in Mali, Cameroun, Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana also have plants of 1.5mmtpa capacity respectively.
Dangote Cement recently inaugurated its 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum (mmtpa) capacity cement plant valued at $400 million with a 30 megawatts coal plant to power the factory.
