Invest At Home, Dangote Tells African Entrepreneurs

President and Chief Executive of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has called on African entrepreneurs to invest in the continent as a priority.

Dangote advised while speaking at the ‘Imo State Economic Summit 2025’ held in the State on Thursday.

According to him, local investments will in turn attract foreign investments, adding that foreigners would not feel the need to come to the continent if local investors failed to play their part.

“I want to first of all thank President Bola Tinubu for his bold policies, which are already yielding results. He really took some bold economic steps, one of which was the removal of fuel subsidy, and those of us who have scratched the surface of the business environment in Nigeria are now benefiting from our decisions.

“But one thing I want to advise our entrepreneurs is that we should invest at home. What attracted some of us was the good governance, rule of law, and the good policies that the government has put on the ground. And you can see that nothing is impossible. So, our own job is to keep investing at home.

“If we don’t invest at home, there is nobody on earth who will come and invest here. What attracts foreign investors is the domestic investments, and that’s what we are doing.

“Yesterday, while I was being interviewed by CNN, they asked why I decided to double the capacity of my refinery to make it the largest in the world, from 650,000 barrels per day.

“I told them that; well, I don’t have anywhere else to go and invest but at home.”

“When I say at home, I mean in Nigeria and Africa. There are so many potential and mineral resources in Africa. Africa has about 30 per cent of the world’s minerals, and there are lots of people fighting to have these minerals. If we don’t lead the way by putting down investment, who do we expect to come and invest in our continent? And we at Dangote Group have taken up that leadership in making sure that people come here to invest heavily.”

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He noted that at the heart of economic growth is an effective power supply.

“There can never be growth without power”, he said, congratulating the Governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodinma, for the 375 megawatt electricity initiative.

He assured the Imo State Governor of his intention to invest in the state, adding that the Dangote Group plans to be the biggest fertilizer investor by 2028.

“But there is more to come. You tell me which is the best area to invest, we are investors, and I can tell you that in the next three years, the programme we have in the Dangote Group- we are investing heavily in fertilizer. We want to become the number one fertilizer plant in Nigeria by 2028.  We are moving from 3 million tons of urea to 12 million tons.’

He also hinted that the Dangote Refinery would be refining about 1.4 million barrels per day as part of its expansion plan.

“The refinery will be at 1.4 million barrels per day – this has never been done anywhere in the world. Only 1.25 is being refined by Reliance, and we will be bigger than Reliance”, he said.