Africa’s richest man and Founder Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has said that the country will soon begin export of cement to the US even as it seeks to be self-sufficient in refining petroleum products up to the tune of about 650,000 bpd capacity which will satisfy not just Nigeria but the whole 15 ECOWAS states.

According to Dangote, who was speaking at the 9th Bola Tinubu Colloquium themed: ‘MAKE IT IN NIGERIA’, “by 2014, the entire production of cement in Nigeria was 1.8 million tons. As at 2004 Nigeria was the largest importer of cement in Africa and number three in the world after US and Spain and in 2011 we became the largest importer of cement in the world at no. 1 position”.

Dangote added that all we needed was a proper backup policy from the government for proper integration and for the country to become self-sufficient in cement production. “Now, all that is history because in Nigeria today we have more than 45 million tons of cement. For the first time in 2016 we exported 400 thousand tons of cement. Nigeria as at today has the capacity to export 7 million tons of cement”.

With 70 per cent of entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa being Nigerians, there are a lot of opportunities that people are not seeing, he said. He added that Nigeria has what it takes to turn things around. “The population of Nigeria is growing, and by 2020 when it is estimated that there’ll be 210 million people in Nigeria, how do we feed this number and how do you satisfy their needs? There’s quite a lot for us to do and this opens up a lot of opportunities. This is possible with the support of the government”.

Dangote however urged the government to do more to improve the power situation in the country and also do away with inconsistency in terms of government policies which was why previous entrepreneurs failed in terms of producing/ manufacturing locally.