About a week ago, Dangote commissioned a cement factory in Okpella Edo state worth $1bn. This ground breaking celebration was also used to mark the 59th birthday of the Africa’s Richest Man and President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote.
To many industry watchers this announcement didn’t come as a surprise as Dangote has continued to show his plans to expand across several African countries by 2019.
However, prior to the inauguration of the Okpella cement Factory, it was announced that Dangote commenced the construction of a 3MMTPA grinding plant in Ivory Coast.
Currently, Dangote Cement Plc is present in almost all the regions in Africa that are rich in limestone deposits, which is an essential component for the production of cement. In just 10 years, Dangote has established cement plants of over 43MMTA capacity across Sub-Saharan Africa. The company is also now fully operational in about seven African countries. Dangote’s ambitious strategy for Africa, where the company is now targeting a total capacity of 75Mta by 2019 could see Dangote become the King of Cement in Africa. This is due to the fact that there is currently no cement company that has its foot prints across several regions in Africa with a capacity more than that of Dangote Cement Plc. Dangote Cement in Nigeria controls about 65 per cent of the market and over 30 per cent of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. According to Dangote, the group’s cement production had surpassed Nigeria’s average total consumption of 20 million metric tonnes.