Orji Kalu’s Firm, Chinese Company Sign Deal on New Energy Development

• Plan establishment of lithium smelting facility in Abia

Emmanuel Addeh  and Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

Chairman of Swiber Africa (Nigeria) Group, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, and Zhu Gongshan, Chairman of GCL (China) Group, have officially signed a new energy industry framework cooperation agreement in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

According to a statement from the firms, under the agreement, the two parties will engage in in-depth cooperation across areas, including energy system development, strategic lithium resource development, and industrial chain collaboration.

This signing, the partners said, marks an important outcome of strengthened practical cooperation between China and Nigeria, and represents a key step in GCL’s active response to the Belt and Road Initiative and its broader internationalisation strategy.

“As one of Africa’s leading economies, Nigeria has long faced severe power shortages and a weak electricity grid, which have significantly constrained industrial development and improvements in living standards.

“Against the backdrop of the global energy transition and deepening China-Africa cooperation, GCL Group is leveraging its more than 20 years of experience in integrated oil, gas, and green energy development in African countries such as Ethiopia and Djibouti.

“Targeting Nigeria’s pressing energy and resource challenges, GCL is focusing on the development of a new-generation power system and the lithium battery industry chain, while comprehensively expanding its strategic footprints along the belt and road corridors,” the statement explained.

In terms of power system construction, GCL said it will integrate internationally advanced high-efficiency clean power generation technologies with scenario-based system solutions. It stressed that a key offering will be the full-scale virtual power plant system successfully deployed in the Suzhou Industrial Park jointly developed by China and Singapore—which can achieve a load regulation accuracy of up to 94 per cent.

“This system will provide Nigeria with intelligent energy management capabilities ranging from millisecond-level rapid response to medium and long-term precise forecasting. The cooperation will be directly aligned with Nigeria’s Presidential Power Initiative (PPI), with plans to develop major projects including 3GW of gas-fired power plants, 4 GW of integrated wind and solar energy projects, as well as hydropower and coal-fired power stations.

“Grid upgrade projects will also be implemented in parallel, building an efficient and highly coordinated ‘generation–transmission–distribution–consumption’ energy network and driving Nigeria’s power system transition from manual control to intelligent control,” the release noted.

At the same time, the statement said that lithium resource development and the establishment of a full industry chain constitute another core pillar of the cooperation.

Amid the global lithium battery boom, lithium, it said, has emerged as a strategically critical resource, with ‘Lithium Shapes the Energy Future’ increasingly resonating across the industry.

To this end, it explained that Nigeria possesses abundant lithium resources, but development has long been limited to low-value-added stages such as raw ore extraction and preliminary processing.

“Issues including grade volatility and idle capacity have prevented the full realisation of resource value. In line with Nigeria’s policy direction to strengthen local lithium processing starting in 2026, GCL will leverage its industrial chain advantages to introduce advanced mining and smelting technologies.

“The two sides will focus on jointly developing a lithium carbonate smelting facility in Abia state, creating a closed-loop lithium industry chain encompassing “resource security + production and operations + global exports,” it added.

This model, it said, mirrors GCL’s successful development of a full natural gas value chain in Ethiopia and will also support the company’s domestic industrial layout.

As a major participant in the global lithium battery materials sector, GCL noted that it has already established large-scale lithium iron phosphate (LFP) production capacity in locations such as Renshou and Leshan in Sichuan Province.

“Access to high-quality overseas lithium resources will provide a stable supply of premium raw materials for GCL’s materials business, enabling precise global matching of resources and production capacity,” the statement concluded.