Africa will be self-sufficient in fertiliser within 40 months, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote said on Friday, on the basis of a planned expansion of his $2.5 billion plant on the outskirts of Lagos.<\/p>\n
Africa currently imports over 6 million metric tons of fertiliser annually as it struggles to produce enough food in often challenging growing conditions.<\/p>\n
The benefits of increasing domestic production would include reduced foreign exchange expenditure, which has been a major economic burden in Nigeria because of the weakness of the local currency.<\/p>\n
“In the next 40 months, Africa will not import fertiliser from anywhere. We have a very aggressive trajectory right now. We want to put Dangote to be the highest producer of urea, bigger and higher than Qatar – give me 40 months,” Dangote said at the annual Afreximbank meeting in Abuja.<\/p>\n
Dangote runs Africa’s largest granulated urea complex, which has annual capacity of 3 million tons, 37% of which it exports to the United States. It will need to double current output to achieve his ambition. Dangote has said he is not worried about the impact of\u00a0Trump tariffs.<\/p>\n
Analysts say the market outlook for fertiliser is\u00a0bullish, but there are also challenges and the kind of expansion Dangote seeks requires infrastructure to be built.<\/p>\n
“Any new fertiliser plant or expansion project faces cost overrun risks to the producer,” Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst at Morningstar Research, said.<\/p>\n
Mikolah Judson, an analyst at global risk consultancy, Control Risk, cited the need for “transport infrastructure and port capacity,” saying “bottlenecks routinely delay various import and export projects in Nigeria”.<\/p>\n
Dangote has a track record for delivering big projects. He also owns\u00a0the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Africa’s largest, although its launch was repeatedly delayed and it exceeded its initial budget.<\/p>\n
He has said he intends to list the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery next year and on Friday he also confirmed plans to list his fertiliser plant on the local stock exchange this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa will be self-sufficient in fertiliser within 40 months, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote said on Friday, on the basis of a planned expansion of his $2.5 billion plant on the outskirts of Lagos. Africa currently imports over 6 million metric tons of fertiliser annually as it struggles to produce enough food in often challenging growing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,34,27],"tags":[2099,175],"class_list":["post-16782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-society","category-west-africa","tag-aliko-dangote","tag-nigeria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}