Dangote tomatoes set to tackle poverty, unemployment in Nigeria

KANO It's a situation that mirrors the giant oil industry, where Nigeria has abundant resources but has lacked the capacity, will or ability to exploit it, forcing a reliance on imports.

But Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote is hoping to change tomato production with a giant factory that will boost domestic output, create jobs -- and even, indirectly, fight Boko Haram.

For the past five years, the Dangote Group conglomerate he heads has been working to build a $20-million (18.4-million-euro) tomato processing plant outside the northern city of Kano.

The city and state of the same name has been blighted by poverty and unemployment, seen as key drivers to radicalisation fuelling the Islamist insurgency in the wider north since 2009.

But it's hoped the giant factory the size of 10 football pitches, set alongside 17,000 hectares (acres) of irrigated fields, will help by tapping a potential agricultural goldmine.

The country's agriculture ministry puts annual current demand for tomato puree at 900,000 tonnes.

When the Dangote factory opens from next month it will provide 430,000 tonnes of paste that is used widely in Nigerian dishes from jollof rice to fiery soups.

"Nigeria is such a huge market for tomato paste that we will find quite challenging to satisfy," the factory's general manager, Abdulkarim Kaita, told AFP.

"Already local tomato paste packaging companies have placed orders with us which we will have to work hard to satisfy.

"We are set to begin operations. We are only waiting for the tomatoes which are ripening in the fields."

  

Nigeria grows some 1.5 million tonnes of tomatoes every year, making it the 14th biggest producer in the world.

But it's forced to rely on imports of tomato puree, mostly from China, because of a lack of processing plants.

Dangote's factory, built by Switzerland-based Syngenta, will directly employ 120 people and 50,000 farmers have been engaged to grow the tomatoes required for the process of making concentrate.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has provided technical assistance such as soft loans for seeds and fertiliser. The factory will then buy the produce at competitive rates, said Kaita.

Currently, about half of the local tomato crop rots because of a lack of storage facilities, poor pricing and access to markets, which has prompted many farmers to stop cultivation, said the CBN.

The improved seed varieties to increase yields, access to chemicals, more up-to-date farming techniques and a ready market for the produce is designed to entice farmers back.

"Once we start production the factory will be providing employment to farmers and (the) tomato paste packaging industry, traders, haulage operators and many others to support the tomato value chain," said production manager Ashwin Patil.

Plans to increase production -- and acquire an idle tomato paste factory in neighbouring Kaduna state -- are in the pipeline, he added.

For farmers such as Yusuf Ado Kadawa, it's a lifeline.

"We really incur heavy losses from our yield, which rots away due to lack of (a) ready market for our tomatoes, which is a perishable produce. But now we have a market close to us," he said.

  

President Muhammadu Buhari is keen to diversify Nigeria's economy away from an over-reliance on oil as revenues have been severely depleted by the global slump in crude prices.

Former agriculture minister Akinwumi Adesina, now head of the African Development Bank, in 2013 described the sector as "the new oil".

Some 30 percent of Nigeria's estimated 170 million people are employed in agriculture, mostly at a subsistence level, although moves have been made to commercialise production.

Erratic power supply, which Nigeria has been grappling with for more than two decades, and lack of import controls remain the factory's main challenges.

The factory will have to rely on diesel-hungry generators for electricity, adding to production costs and reducing competitiveness with cheaper imports.

Both issues contributed to the collapse of hundreds of factories in Dangote's home state of Kano in the past two decades, including his textile and wheat flour factories.

But the vice-president of Nigeria's manufacturers union, Ali Madugu, said the future still looked bright.

"Once the government can place restrictions on the import of Chinese tomato pastes... the sky's the limit for the Dangote tomato paste because the market is there for them to exploit," he added.

Aliko Dangote: Africa's richest man leads 'lions' of business

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote typifies the new "African lions" whose business empires are winning a competitive edge over foreign multinationals because of their better grasp of local markets.
"In emerging markets, there is no substitute for on-the-ground experience," said a report released Tuesday by the US-based Boston Consulting Group, called "Dueling With Lions".
When business magazine Forbes last week published its latest list of the most powerful people on the planet, Dangote was one of only two people on it from Africa.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ranked 49th in the list, while the Nigerian tycoon was 71st, rated by his power over people and resources, financial clout and range of activity from cement, telecoms, oil and gas to sugar, flour and pasta.
Through hard work, shrewd business practices and tactical networking he has built an empire from South Africa to Senegal and become a regular at events such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
On November 5 the 58-year-old's estimated net worth was $13.8 billion (12.7 billion euros), according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

"You have to think big. If you think small, you will remain small in life. And you must be consistent. When you start a business, you might have hiccups here and there," he said in an online video in 2012.
"That does not mean that the business is not going to work. There must be challenges... you must know how to work round these challenges."
The Lagos-based Dangote Group is Africa's largest private employer with some 26,000 staff, giving it a head-start over foreign firms through local knowledge and long-standing relationships.
Dangote Cement, which he hopes to list on the London Stock Exchange, has subsidiaries in at least 14 African countries.
In August, it signed a $4.3 billion contract with China's Sinoma International Engineering Co. for the construction of 11 new cement plants, 10 of them in Africa and the other in Nepal.
When completed, the company's existing capacity of 46 million metric tonnes per annum is expected to be boosted by about 25 million metric tonnes.
As such, Dangote has positioned his businesses as indispensable in a changing continent, providing the raw materials to build its new infrastructure, fuel its growing industries and even feed its workers.
In an interview on CNBC published in March 2014, he said: "Africa has come of age. The opportunities we have in Africa are second to none."
In his home country, where patronage reigns, Dangote has courted politicians of all stripes and outlined plans to help develop badly-needed infrastructure.
He recently signed loan agreements to invest more than $9 billion in a petrochemical refinery and fertiliser complex in the southwest -- the country's largest.

President Muhammadu Buhari is keen to develop agriculture and he has re-started the country's four existing refineries, which had run idle in favour of the expensive export of crude and import of products.
The refineries have a total capacity of 445,000 barrels per day but are only currently producing less than half that. Dangote's single plant aims to produce 400,000 bpd.
In an interview with CNBC in 2014, Dangote said of his drive to succeed: "Hard work pays. Nothing is impossible."
But he has also followed the example of tycoons such as Microsoft's Bill Gates and Virgin's Richard Branson of giving back to society.
His Dangote Foundation has spent billions of naira on education, healthcare and disaster relief, including a $3 million pledge in December last year to help victims of the west Africa Ebola outbreak.
In 2012, he teamed up with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to eradicate polio in Nigeria. In September, Nigeria was taken off the list of the world's polio-endemic countries.
Like many Nigerians, Dangote is an avowed football fan and has long been rumoured to be keen on buying a stake in Arsenal, which could make him the first African owner of an English Premier League club.
"I still hope, one day at the right price, that I'll buy the team," he was quoted as saying by Bloomberg in May.
Few would put it past him.



AFP