Chairman/CEO of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote

The Dangote Group, a diversified indigenous corporation Thursday commissioned its newest cement plant in Mfila, Congo, which is expected to provide in excess of 1,000 direct job opportunities.

The plant, built at the cost of $300 million has a capacity of 1.5mtpa and is capable of employing 1,000 direct job opportunities in addition to several other thousands of indirect jobs.

The President of Congo, Mr. Denis Sassou Nguesso, who inaugurated the plant, described the investment as an industrial revolution in the Economic Community of the Central African States (CEMAC).

Expressing his joy to host to huge investment, he said his government has observed other investments by Dangote Group in other countries, adding that such investment have created a lot of value for their economies.

He described the investment as timely, coming at time government revenue had gone down by 31.3 percent and revenue from oil by 65.1 percent since 2015 with fall in prices of oil.

President Muhammadu Buhari who was represented by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, was full of commendation for Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chairman/CEO of the group for the project and others in many African countries.

He said, “I believe that it is only home-grown practical solutions that can address the myriad issues plaguing Africa today and one of such challenges that Africa has been grappling with for decades is the infrastructure deficit. I am confident that massive investments in cement production, which is a key driver of infrastructural development, will contribute in no small measure to addressing this perennial problem,”

Chairman of Dangote Cement Plc, Aliko Dangote, said he was happy to have completed the project on schedule.

He said the addition of Dangote Cement’s 1.5 million metric tons per annum plant has more than doubled the total cement production capacity of Congo, which according to him stands at 2.550 million metric tons per annum.

“It is our hope that the inauguration of the plant will boost Congo’s economy, conserve foreign exchange that would otherwise have been spent on imports for the country, and create employment opportunities down the value chain.

“It is envisaged that this would contribute substantially to the availability and affordability of cement in the country and the Republic of Congo will no longer need to depend on imports to bridge the gap between demand and supply”, he also said.