Aliko
Dangote is now a coal miner as Tanzania
has offered his Dangote Cement Company in the southeastern town of Mtwara, land
to mine coal for its operations.
Tanzania’s
Ministry of Energy and Minerals at the weekend handed a 10-square-kilometre
plot of land to the $500 million cement factory set up in 2015 by Aliko Dangote,
Africa’s richest man.
The factory
has an annual capacity of 3 million tonnes.
According to
local media The Citizen, the coal concession was sanctioned by President John
Magufuli to allow the company get a reliable supply of coal to fuel its activities.
Tanzania has
banned the importation of coal from South Africa and Tancoal, the only one coal
producing company in the country, cannot meet the entire market demand.
Dangote runs
on expensive diesel generators and requested Tanzanian government support last
year to supply natural gas at a reduced price.
President
Magufuli later intervened after a meeting with Nigerian billionaire and the
company’s owner Aliko Dangote over stalled negotiations on prices.
He blamed
middlemen for the delay in supply plans and said Dangote “will now buy natural
gas directly from the state-run TPDC (Tanzania Petroleum Development
Corporation)”.
Dangote,
Africa’s biggest cement producer, is seeking to double Tanzania’s annual output
of cement to 6 million tonnes.
It plans to
roll out plants across Africa.
(NAN)
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