Paul Biya, Dangote Discuss Business Opportunities

President Paul Biya yesterday granted an audience to Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote at the State House during which they discussed ways of expanding the business relation between Cameroon and the Dangote Group.

Africa’s richest man and President of the Dangote Group already has business interests in Cameroon especially in the domain of cement production. The meeting was therefore an opportunity for him and the Head of State to examine the possibility of expanding his business here to other domains such as oil and gas.

Speaking to State House reporters after the audience, the Nigerian business mogul said he reiterated to President Biya his resolve to increase and diversify his investments in Cameroon, with the goal of creating a platform for job opportunities and socio-economic growth.

He disclosed that he intends to move away from just the cement sector-which is already operational- to other componentsof his conglomerate in Cameroon, adding that he also expressed profound gratitude to the government and especially President Paul Biya for creating an enabling environment for his business installations in the country.

“One of the areas in which we discussed is the continuous expansion of Dangote business which we set up here in Cameroon a couple of years back. We intend to continue to invest more not only in cement but in other areas like oil and gas. It was a very, very good meeting,” Dangote said.

“Our investment here has not only had incentives, but facilitation. When we first came to Cameroon and started our work, we had very big challenges, but the President and the Cabinet really stood on our side. The President really gave us all the support. Cameroon is a very good neighbour of Nigeria. If there’s additional demand for our product, we will continue to put in our additional resources to make sure that we double production capacity,” he added.

At the end of the audience, President Paul Biya decorated the business magnate with the medal of Commander of the National Order of Valour in recognition of his investment efforts in supporting socio-economic development in Cameroon.

Dangote’s Business In Cameroon

At the moment, Dangote Group’s presence in Cameroon is in the cement sector with the opening,in 2015, of Dangote Cement CameroonSA.

The FCFA 70 billion worth cement production factory was flagged off in March of that year during a ceremony presided at by then Prime Minister Philemon Yang.

Situated at the Base Elf area of the banks of River Wouri in the economic capital Douala, the plant, which took a little over four years to build, has a production capacity of 1.5 million tons of cement annually. In 2020, it supplied about 38 per cent of all cement in the Cameroon market, according to a report from the Dangote Group.

The company also provides hundreds of direct and indirect jobs to Cameroonians. 

According to the Group, the Cameroon arm of Dangote Cement business is one of the most vibrant of the 10 existing on the African continent as it was ranked the third most performing in 2020.

Aside Cameroon and his home country Nigeria, Dangote has cement subsidiaries inCongo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

Who’s Aliko Dangote?

The name Aliko Dangote is familiar for an average Cameroonian. Born on April 10, 1957, in Nigeria’s Northern State of Kano, Dangote grew up as an entrepreneurial young man to become the wealthiest person on the African continent today.

For 10years running, Dangote has been named by Forbes Magazine as the richest person in Africa, with the 2021 ranking putting his net worth at 11.8 billion US dollars, according to Forbes.

With money borrowed from his uncle, Dangote, after graduating from college, started a small business at the age of 21 before going ahead to build a company that today employs more than 30,000 people, making him one of the biggest private sector employees in Africa.

Dangote owns the Dangote Group which operates multiple businesses including cement productionfactories, sugar milling and refining companies, salt refining installations, packaging materials production firms, and tomato transformation and packaging plants, just to cite these few.

He is also into oil and gas and has also been spreading his business tentacles into other lucrative sectors such astelecommunications, real estate and steel manufacturing, according to Investopedia, a credible business news portal.

Aliko Dangote, a practicing Muslim, is a well-known philanthropist with most of such philanthropy exhibited through his foundation – The Aliko Dangote Foundation- which he created in 1994.He has been using the foundation to leverage the livelihood of thousands of people not only in his native Nigeria but in other parts of the continent where he operates businesses.