Dangote said that the refinery, which has already started
supplying diesel and aviation fuel in Nigeria, has the capacity to meet the
diesel and petrol needs of West Africa and the aviation fuel demand of the
entire African continent.
The richest man in Africa spoke as a panelist at the Africa
CEO Forum Annual Summit in Kigali on Friday.
“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 a litre,” he
declared.
Highlighted how far the oil company has come, Dangote
expressed how they are focused in ensuring that the continent will depend less
on importation in the nearest future.
“We have enough gasoline to give to at least the entire West
Africa, diesel to give to West Africa and Central Africa. We have enough
aviation fuel to give to the entire continent and also export some to Brazil
and Mexico,” he said.
“Today, our polypropylene and our polyethene will meet the
entire demand of Africa and we are doing base oil, which is like engine oil, we
are doing linear benzyl, which is raw material to produce detergent. We have
1.4 billion people in the 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 any more fertilizer from anywhere. We
will make Africa self-sufficient in potash, phosphate, and urea, we are at
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.”
Dangote recalled how his dream for further investment in
Africa as well as ending fuel importation in Africa has culminated in what is
now one of the biggest refineries in the world.
“For some of us, despite the boom of the capital market of
the US, you know, Google, Microsoft and the rest, we didn’t participate, we
took all our money and invested in Africa.
“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 finished our 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.
Speaking further, the African richest man said, “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 keeps importing
things into your continent and dumping goods. what you are importing is poverty
and exporting jobs. 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 is 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 and we are going
out to the next phase which will start early next year.”