Africa’s richest man just walked onto a construction site in Ethiopia and announced he is spending $4 billion to feed the continent.
Aliko Dangote visited Gode in Ethiopia’s Somali Region alongside Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to inspect the fertiliser plant already under construction raising his total investment from $2.5 billion to over $4 billion.
The expanded scope now includes a 110 kilometre pipeline, a 120MW power plant, a polypropylene packaging facility, and a two million tonne NPK blending plant.
Ethiopia currently has zero primary production of inorganic fertiliser. Every bag of fertiliser reaching an Ethiopian farmer today is imported. This one facility changes that entirely.
When the plant reaches full capacity in 2029 it will produce 3 million tonnes of urea annually owned 60 percent by Dangote and 40 percent by the Ethiopian government with supply lines reaching neighbouring markets across East Africa.
Dangote said it plainly: “Africa has the capacity to feed itself and even export to the rest of the world.”
This is what African industrialisation actually looks like. Not aid. Not foreign charity. An African man, African capital, African soil, and a plan to make the continent feed itself.
If Africa controls its own fertiliser production what other import dependencies should it target next?