HARARE: Dangote Cement Plc, Africa’s largest producer of the building material, cut prices in its home market of Nigeria in an attempt to boost cement consumption and compete with imports. Aliko Dangote and Robert Mugabe, August 31 2015. “We’ve already chose to invest into Zimbabwe, that’s why we are here”.
“We want to set up an integrated cement plant here that will be bigger than all the plants that we have”, he said. “We will make cement available”, Dangote told journalists as he emerged from a meeting with Zimbabwe’s vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Nigeria is classified a “Group C” country in Zimbabwe, meaning Nigerian nationals need to apply for visas before coming to Zimbabwe, which according to Dangote is hampering investment.
Zimbabwe has lagged behind neighbours like Mozambique and Zambia in attracting foreign investment but said last month it had approved $971 million in foreign investments in the first half of the year versus $555 million a year ago.
Laws which require locals to hold majority stakes in all companies are also blamed for scaring off foreign investors. Its economy collapsed since Mugabe’s land reforms of 2002, which broke the country’s agricultural backbone, NGGuardian reports.
He disclosed that due to the warm welcome given to Dangote Cement, the company has decided to begin work on the second phase of the plant, which will see the doubling of its capacity from the current 1.5mmtpa to three mmtpa.
The mogul, who earlier in the day met several government ministers, also said Zimbabwe had promised to accelerate the licence and registration processes for the group to start operations “as soon as possible”. Food shortages, economic sanctions, billion-percent hyperinflation and disputed elections have also hurt the Zimbabwe’s citizens in recent years.
He said the investment package would create jobs and “to help Zimbabwe to develop their own economy”. The Dangote Group is into cement manufacturing and importing, sugar manufacturing and refining, salt refining, flour and semolina milling and noodles and pasta manufacturing among others.
