Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President, African Development Bank (AfDB), has stated that Dangote’s fertilizer plant will drive productivity growth in Nigeria, adding that prices will come down and also quality will improve.

The AfDB boss disclosed this during a tour of Dangote Fertiliser and Petrochemical plants on Sunday, according to NAN.

He also stated that the petrochemical plant will save Nigeria the sum of $9 billion a year in imports.

What Adesina is saying

The AfDB president, “One of the things I admire the most about Alhaji Dangote is that, he actually believes in Nigeria and Africa and invests his money in Nigeria and Africa.

“Dangote is quite an inspirational and visionary business leader and for anybody to have done what I have seen here, I think that person deserves world-class kudos for that… I see a company that I will proudly call Africa’s growth accelerator company.

“With this project, we see an acceleration of how to reduce imports, have an outbound on export; a value chain development and how to compete regionally and globally.

“I am completely blown away with what I saw here today as this project will reverse the huge sum the nation spends on foreign exchange.

“When you look at how much we import, it is about US$57 billion worth of different products and we export only about US$50.4 billion, so we have to balance that with about US$7 billion.

“Talking to them here, they showed us that they can have a domestic market of about US$11 billion and that is an incredible market, so this is huge for Nigeria and even for Africa as a continent.”

On the fertiliser complex, Adesina said “It will drive productivity growth in Nigeria, prices will come down and the quality will also improve.”

Responding, Dangote revealed that the refinery would commence operation by the third quarter of 2022.

“On the mechanical completion, we are almost finished but we have started hydro testing and we are almost 70 per cent gone, hopefully before the end of Q3, operations will commence,” he said.

In case you missed it

Recall Nairametrics reported last year that Mr Devakumar Edwin, Group Executive Director, Strategy, Capital Projects of Dangote Industries Limited stated that the $2.5 billion fertilizer plant can produce enough for local demand. The company is also looking towards exports, as it currently delivers 120 trucks locally.

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