By David Agba Abuja
For Africa continent to attract the required investment into its key sectors and achieve economic integration, President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has urged African leaders to review their respective visa procedures and tariff regimes.
Th e review, according to him, will remove unnecessary barriers to intra-African trade and guarantee real growth and foreign direct investment to the respective countries. Discussing with some international business leaders and Nigerian business owners from the Lagos Business School (LBS) at his multi-billion dollars’ refi nery site in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos recently, Dangote said African leaders must make a conscious eff ort to break down the barriers and borders between countries so as to allow free fl ow of goods, services and people. Describing the refi nery as the largest single-train petrochemical facility in the world, Dangote said the crude oil processing factory is designed to refi ne 650,000 barrels per day. He said the facility is completely designed for Nigerian crude oil, with fl exibility to process products from other countries.
He added that he is building Africa’s largest urea plant to produce three million tons of fertilizers yearly. He said: “Everything we are doing here is basically to transform the Nigerian economy. And it is not only to transform, but to also diversify our economy from single commodity market. We are taking a bold step through this petrochemical project to create values that would help us to achieve this aim.”
Noting that his business had grown from a commodity trading company to a diversifi ed global conglomerate in the last two decades, Dangote said he was pumping huge resources into energy production and agriculture across West Africa to close the defi cit in food production and export. Revealing his greatest challenge so far despite his huge investment across Africa, he said, the high scourge of unemployed youth is a source of concern to him.
