Aliko Dangote, the wealthiest Black man in the world and Chairman of Dangote Group, recently disclosed that he is setting up all his factories to work at full capacity – a move that will increase his total revenue above the GDP of Ghana.
The Nigerian businessman revealed his plan while narrating the challenges he encountered in the past four years while building his 360,000 barrels per day refinery in Lagos, Nigeria.
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Dangote launched his petrochemical refinery plant on May 22, 2023, with the refinery seen as a boost and solution to the challenges faced by the government of Nigeria, which has been unable to get the country’s three refineries functioning.
For several years the country has relied on the importation of refined petroleum products and spent billions of dollars on fuel subsidies.
At the 2023 Nigerian Upstream Investment Management Services’ (NUIMS) Annual Value Assurance Review (AVAR) Workshop, Dangote said he had all his grey hairs in the last four years because of the refinery project.
“We knew what we were targeting and our target is by the time we finish all these and we get to our own capacity, we will move our total group revenue from $5bn to $27bn, which is equivalent to Ghana’s GDP,” the billionaire said.
“A lot of people just talk about our refinery but they don’t know what we went through. First of all, to make the land suitable because of climate change, we had to raise the land by 1.5 meters but then when you talk about land, is it just land no? Our land is 7 times that of Victoria Island (VI).”
He further explained, “VI is 458 hectares our land is 2,780 hectares. So it was not land and we had to bring in the three biggest dredging companies and we pumped from the sea and we have a lot of hassle getting environmental, getting approval from the Ministry of Environment… When you are faced with these challenges, in fact, I developed all my grey hair in the last four years.”
