For the
African continent to attract the required investment into key sectors and
achieve economic integration, the President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote
,
has urged leaders to review their visa procedures and tariff regimes.
The review,
according to him, will remove unnecessary barriers to intra-African trade and
guarantee real growth and foreign direct investment to the respective
countries.
Discussing
with some international business leaders and Nigerian business owners from the
Lagos Business School at his multi-billion-dollar refinery site in Ibeju-Lekki,
Lagos recently, Dangote said African leaders must make a conscious effort to
break down the barriers and borders between countries so as to allow free flow
of goods, services and people.
Describing
the refinery as the largest single-train petrochemical facility in the world,
Dangote stated that it was designed to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil
daily, adding that the facility was designed for Nigerian crude oil, with
flexibility to process products from other countries.
Dangote
stated that he was building Africa’s largest urea plant to produce three
million tonnes of fertilizer yearly.
“Everything
we are doing here is basically to transform the Nigerian economy. And it is not
only to transform, but to also diversify our economy from a single commodity
market. We are taking a bold step through this petrochemical project to create
values that will help us to achieve this aim,” he said.
Noting that
his business had grown from a commodity trading to a diversified global
conglomerate in the last two decades, Dangote said he was pumping huge
resources into energy production and agriculture across West Africa to close
the deficit in food production and export Punch reported.
Revealing
his greatest challenge so far despite his huge investment across Africa, he
said, the high scourge of unemployed youths was a source of concern to him.
Dangote also
harped on diversification as the major solution to the unemployment challenge
the nation was facing, adding that successive governments had always paid lip
service to job creation and diversification.
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