President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has identified Nigeria’s industrialisation struggles as being largely due to unstable electricity.
Dangote, Africa’s richest man, emphasized that running a business in Nigeria and many other African nations is significantly more expensive compared to developed countries, primarily because of unreliable power supply.
According to him, operating a business abroad is at least 30 per cent cheaper due to readily available and stable electricity.
He made these remarks during a visit by Zambia’s Minister of Energy, Makozo Chikote, to the Dangote refinery in Lekki, Lagos.
Citing an example, Dangote revealed that his cement factory in Ethiopia is the group’s most profitable because of the country’s stable electricity supply.
Reflecting on his journey into industrialisation, he disclosed that his research into past failures—including his grandfather’s—revealed that inadequate electricity was a major obstacle.
He explained, “If there’s no power, there won’t be growth. For example, anything I’m going to do abroad will cost me maybe 30 per cent cheaper than here, because abroad is plug-and-play. You just go, no infrastructure construction. You just build a factory, and you connect to the network; that’s all.
“That’s why, if you look at it today, I tell you that our most profitable cement factory is in Ethiopia because there’s no investment in power. They gave us power at the same rate for five years. So, we plan, it’s a one-price electricity continuously.”
Dangote lamented that in Nigeria, his company had to invest heavily in power generation to sustain operations at the refinery and other factories—an additional burden not faced by businesses in more developed economies.
Beyond electricity, he also pointed to policy inconsistencies as another significant hurdle to Nigeria’s industrial development.
“One of the problems of industrialisation is inconsistencies in government policies, where, just like a footballer, you’re about to score the goal, and the government will remove the goalpost and point behind you that the goalpost is behind. So, you have to now turn. Once you turn back, you have a lot of challenges to get to that goalpost again,” he stated.
He further highlighted that when industries thrive, the government ultimately benefits through tax revenues.
“For example, in our cement, every N1 we turn around, 52 kobo go to the government in various taxes—30 per cent corporate tax, 7.5 per cent value-added tax, two per cent for education, and one per cent for health. When money is being made in the company, if you want to take the money, all the shareholders will have to pay the government 10 per cent as withholding tax again. This is for the Federal Government. When you add the state and the local government, everything now is something else,” he stressed.
Dangote warned that when industries collapse, the government is among the biggest losers, reinforcing the need for a stable and business-friendly environment to drive industrial growth and national development.
