By OKECHUKWU PEACE
Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has announced that he will invest more than $170 million in the production of rice and sugarcane in Nasarawa state, north-central Nigeria.
Dangote reportedly made the announcement on Saturday through a representative, Abdullahi Sule, the Managing Director of Dangote Group’s sugar productions, when the latter visited the state on an assessment tour of the investment opportunities in the State.
Sule said that apart from developing rice and sugar plantations on the 17,000 hectares of land it owns in the state, the Dangote Group is also looking to explore Nasarawa’s massive coal deposits to power Dangote factories across the country, explaining that the group was looking inward to explore coal as a cheaper energy source in lieu of the high cost of gas to power the factories. Nasarawa has more than 300mn metric tonnes of untapped coal deposits.
“The three Dangote cement plants in the country have the capacity to produce over 25 million tonnes of cement, so you can imagine the amount of coal the plants will require,” he said.
Dangote, 59, has a current net worth of $12.3 billion.
