The Africa’s richest man and chairman of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, says with the plan by the Dangote Refinery, Nigeria will not need to import gasoline by June, this year.
Speaking at the Africa CEO Forum Annual Summit in Kigali on Friday, he said the refinery had started supplying diesel and aviation fuel in Nigeria.
According to him, the refinery has the capacity to meet the diesel and petrol needs of West Africa and the aviation fuel demand of the entire African continent.
“Right now, Nigeria has no cause to import anything apart from gasoline and by sometime in June, within the next four or five weeks, Nigeria shouldn’t import anything like gasoline; not one drop of a litre.
“We have enough gasoline to give to at least the entire West Africa, diesel to give to West Africa and Central Africa. We have enough aviation fuel to give to the entire continent and also export some to Brazil and Mexico.
“Today, our polypropylene and our polyethene will meet the entire demand of Africa and we are doing base oil, which is like engine oil, we are doing linear benzyl, which is raw material to produce detergent. We have 1.4 billion people in the population, nobody is producing that in Africa.
“So, all the raw materials for our detergents are imported. We are producing that raw material to make Africa self-sufficient.
“As I said, give us three or a maximum of four years and Africa will not, I repeat, not import any more fertilizer from anywhere. We will make Africa self-sufficient in potash, phosphate, and urea, we are at three million tonnes and in the next twenty months, we will be at six million tonnes of urea which is the entire capacity of Egypt. We are getting there.” Dangote said.
He added: “Our refinery is quite big, it is something that we believe that Africa needs. If you look at the whole continent, there are only two countries that don’t import petroleum products, which is a tragedy. They are only Algeria and Libya. The rest are all importers. So, we need to change and make sure that we don’t just go and produce raw materials, we should also produce finished products and create jobs.”