Adesina sees Dangote petrochemical plant fueling Africa’s economic growth

Adesina sees Dangote petrochemical plant fueling Africa’s economic growth

The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has described Dangote Refinery and Dangote Fertiliser Plant as the best industrialised projects to happen to Africa, noting their ability to positively impact the economic growth and development of Africa as a continent.

The AfDB boss, who was on a tour of Dangote Refinery and fertiliser projects over the weekend with the board members of the bank, described Aliko Dangote as an enigma who should be honoured in Africa and beyond for his passion, vision and determination to develop and ensure that Africa, as a continent, was out of the poverty circle; with his aggressive employment generation scheme across most African countries.

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Adesina said, “I see a company that I will proudly call Africa’s growth accelerator company. With this project, we see an acceleration of how to reduce imports. We see an acceleration on how to have an outbound on export; a value chain development and how to compete regionally and globally.

“I am completely blown away with what I have seen here today. This project will reverse the huge sum the nation spends on foreign exchange. When you look at how much we import, it is about $57bn worth of different products, and we export only about $50.4bn, so we have to balance that with about $7bn, and talking to them here, they showed us that they can have a domestic market of about $11bn, and that is an incredible market and that will save Nigeria about $9bn a year from importing petroleum products. So this is huge for Nigeria and even for Africa as a continent.”

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On the fertiliser complex, he said, “Being a man passionate about agriculture, this is a company that is producing three million metric tonnes of urea which will make Nigeria totally self-sufficient. Nigeria will become a net exporter of fertiliser. It will drive productivity growth in Nigeria, prices will come down and the quality will also improve.”

While thanking the AfDB team for the visit to the plants, President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, said, “The refinery will commence operations by the third quarter of 2022.

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