Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote is poised to become the world’s largest exporter of rice over the next four years.
According to African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina, Dangote started his rice exporting business by investing a billion dollars (Ksh. 100 billion) into locally produced rice in Nigeria.
“I remember when I was a minister of Agriculture in Nigeria. Aliko Dangote was there, and he was our biggest importer at the time, and he and I used to have all the time to dialogue. One day, I was in my office, about 10 O’clock, Aliko walks in, Ngozi was the minister of finance. Aliko bangs on my door and said ‘minister I came to see you’, and I said ‘what are we going to disagree on this time?’” he said, adding:
“He said no, I have actually looked at the policies, and the policies you put in place for import substitution are very right policies. So, I have changed my business model from being an importer to being a local producer. I will put in $300 million into producing and processing rice in Nigeria. I said yippee! I went home, I told my wife, my best day as a minister.” However, Dangote came back three months later with a changed mind to invest a billion dollars rather than $300 million.
Aliko Dangote , the Chairman of Dangote Rice Limited, said he was moved to go into rice cultivation because of the genuine interest of the Federal government to revive agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, and reduce importation of foods that could be produced locally.
“In the next three years we want to produce one million tons of quality rice and make it available and affordable to the people. We hope to do 150,000 ha and when we are done, Nigeria will not have anything to do with importation of rice,” said Dangote.
The two were speaking during the at the Mo Ibrahim Forum in Morocco.
