Africa-Press – Nigeria. Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote aims to raise his group’s annual revenues to $100 billion by 2030, a leap equivalent to five times its current size.
The richest man in Africa is betting on three main pillars:
– A giant oil refinery near Lagos.
– Significant expansion in fertilizer production.
– Cement operations, which have been the main source of liquidity for the group for years.
Fatima Dangote, the executive director of the oil and gas sector of the group, stated in an interview with a local source that “Dangote Group” currently generates about $20 billion in revenue, with a target to increase it to $80 billion within three years, and then to $100 billion by the end of the decade.
This is the first time the private group has revealed details about its revenue size and financial plans, according to the agency.
This leap requires investments estimated at around $40 billion, which the group plans to finance through listing the oil refinery on the stock exchange, selling a stake in the fertilizer business, and a secondary listing of Dangote Cement on the London Stock Exchange, in addition to borrowing and attracting investors from Africa, the Middle East, and international markets.
From Rice to Heavy Industries
Dangote began his career in 1978 trading rice, sugar, and cement, before transitioning from importing goods to locally manufacturing them on a large scale, according to the official biography of the group’s president.
The group’s philosophy since then has been to invest in essential products that African economies import in large quantities, and then build large local facilities to replace imports with local production.
Dangote achieved his earliest successes in cement before expanding into sugar, salt, flour, ports, transportation, energy, mining, real estate, and automobiles. However, he entered a completely different phase with the construction of the oil and fertilizer refinery in the Lekki industrial area near Lagos.
Today, his empire includes listed companies such as Dangote Cement, Dangote Sugar Refinery, and Nascon Allied Industries, along with a controlling stake in Peugeot Automobile Nigeria and activities in shipping, ports, energy, mining, real estate, and automobiles.
The Refinery at the Heart of the Bet
The Dangote refinery represents the core of the new growth plan, with its construction costing about $20 billion. It is expected to begin commercial production gradually in 2024, after nearly a decade of construction that faced delays and significant cost increases.
The establishment of the refinery addresses one of the most notable paradoxes of the Nigerian economy, as the country has been one of Africa’s largest crude oil producers for years but has relied almost entirely on importing gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel due to the dysfunction of its local refineries.
The refinery’s original design capacity is 650,000 barrels per day, but its management announced last June that it had passed sustainable operational tests at a rate of 700,000 barrels per day, according to the group’s official disclosure.
Dangote plans to double capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028, placing the facility among the largest oil refineries in the world. The group also intends to replicate the refinery model in the coastal city of Lamu, Kenya, with a project estimated to cost around $17 billion and take about five years to implement, according to a local source.
The refinery gained additional importance after the outbreak of the Iran war on February 28, which disrupted energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
This has helped increase Dangote’s wealth by about 17% since the beginning of the year to a record level of $35 billion, according to the local billionaire index.
The Challenge of Securing Crude
Securing crude oil is one of the toughest challenges facing the doubling of the refinery’s capacity. The facility faced difficulties in its early operational phases in obtaining the required quantities from local producers and had to import shipments from abroad.
Data from the Nigerian Oil Regulatory Commission shows that local refineries were allocated 61.9 million barrels during the first quarter of 2026, but the actual quantity delivered was only 28.5 million barrels, less than half of the allocations. The commission attributed the gap primarily to disputes between producers and refineries over prices.
Nigeria’s crude oil production, excluding condensates, was 1.56 million barrels per day in June, according to the latest regulatory data.
This means that the targeted capacity of Dangote’s refinery, at 1.4 million barrels per day, would equal about 90% of the country’s current total crude production if the refinery relied solely on Nigerian supplies. Therefore, the group will need to increase local production, sign long-term contracts, or continue importing crude from other markets.
Fertilizers as a Second Pillar
In the fertilizer sector, the group is implementing an investment program worth $7 billion to raise urea production capacity in Nigeria from 3 million to 9 million tons annually, alongside establishing a plant with a capacity of 3 million tons in Ethiopia, increasing its total capacity to 12 million tons per year.
The African Development Bank is providing a $600 million facility to support the program, according to the official announcement from the institution.
Natural gas, abundant in Nigeria, is the essential material for urea production, and Dangote is betting on a significant gap between the agricultural needs of Africa and current fertilizer usage levels.
The African Development Bank states that the continent’s population of about 1.5 billion consumes only about 6 million tons of urea annually, compared to 40 million tons in India and 50 million tons in China, despite similar population sizes.
Cement
Cement has been the cash cow of the Dangote empire for years, providing the profits and liquidity necessary to finance the group’s expansion into more complex and capital-intensive industries.
The installed production capacity of Dangote Cement is about 55 million tons annually across 11 African countries, with the company targeting an increase to 80 million tons by 2030 through investments that include establishing new plants and expanding existing facilities.
Results for the first quarter of 2026 showed a 13.8% increase in cement sales to 7.5 million tons and a 20.4% increase in revenues, while net profit grew by 53.5% year-on-year, according to the company’s official results.
