Dangote identifies agriculture, manufacturing as Nigeria’s economic mainstay

Agriculture and manufac­turing has been identified as two sectors capable of emancipating Nigeria from the uncertainty of an unstable mono-revenue source economy.

The Group Executive Director of Dangote Group, Devakumar Edwin, addressing newsmen in Lagos, stressed that the salva­tion of the Nigerian economy in the future depends on massive agricultural revolution and lo­cal manufacturing.

“And these twin activities are the sectors with huge poten­tials for employment genera­tion which the country is in dire need of now,” he said.

Edwin noted that the develop­ment of the nation’s vast agri­cultural potential was the only solution to the incessant distor­tion to Nigeria’s economy by market forces.

He pointed out that Nigeria has left its economic fortunes to the vagaries of the international market forces, through excessive importation and that it was high time private investors latched in on this situation and help the government out, by aggressively embarking on agriculture and manufacturing.

This, he explained, led the Dangote conglomerate to make huge investments in agriculture and manufacturing by delving into sugar and rice cultivation, fertiliser production, oil and gas refinery as well as petrochemi­cals.

Edwin said: “In our sugar business, you see Savannah sug­ar which we have today apart from the direct employment of 4000 people, during invest­ing and plantation, we engage almost 20,000 people and there is a small farm where we have about less than 10,000 hectares and the cultivation is going on today employing another 10,000 people and today we are talking about 200,000 hectare of land, sa­vannah plant for sugar where al­most 200,000 hectares will be pro­ducing 20 million tonnes of cane and 2million tonnes of sugar.

“The refinery will improve the petrochemical industry, the fertiliser plant will create a lot of employment and the employ­ment to be generated in the agri­cultural sector is phenomenon.”