Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, says African governments had not built a single refining facility in the last 35 years because of people benefitting from massive fuel imports into the continent.
He said this in an interview with CNN’s Eleni Giokos, stating that although he had gained enough experience from building the $19 billion refinery with 650,000bpd Dangote Refinery in Lagos State, he would have however had a rethink if he knew beforehand the huge challenges in building such a facility on the continent.
According to Dangote, foreign aids and investments will not build Africa, as Africans will have to develop the continent on their own.
He said he had to dredge a lot of sand of over 65 million tonnes before work could start on the project, noting that his team carried out the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contracts for the project on their own because of the initial difficulties encountered.
Many people did not expect the project to come to fruition, including those he said were a source of discouragement to him, he said.
When asked if he would have embarked upon it knowing how hard it was going to be, he said: “Actually, yes. If I’m going to do it now, I will do it better because I’ve learned from experience. But if I knew what I was going to go through, I wouldn’t have tried.”
Although he was warned not to embark on the massive project, he said he thought they were only trying to discourage him.
“They did, but I thought they were just trying to discourage me. I’ve learned that there are other countries in Africa. All the African countries that have been trying to build refineries have not been able to. There has not been a refinery in the last 35 years.
“There are so many issues. I can’t count them, but there are so many. It’s not only money, political will, and also people who are benefiting from this whole stuff of importing petroleum products into Africa are actually discouraging those governments from building a refinery.
“And they won’t get the loans anyway because they don’t have very strong banks. The international banks will not support anything like this. We’re talking about industrialising the continent, creating a more connected Africa.
“But we have to make sure we focus and say, look, we are the only ones that can deliver. We Africans are the only people that can develop Africa. If we’re waiting for foreigners or foreign investors to come and develop Africa, it will never happen,” he said.
On what’s next for the company, he said: “We will keep looking at the next opportunities: petrochemicals, upstream, we will look at those opportunities and keep flying. The sky is the limit.”
The fertiliser complex nearby the refinery is 3 million tonnes, he noted, stressing that he felt great being able to pull off the construction of the Dangote Refinery, saying, “I feel very proud as an African doing this. Nobody ever expected us to pull this through. A lot of people had given up. But we’ve been able to deliver. Now it (the project) is about $19 billion, almost $19 billion”.
