Lagos — Dangote Group, controlled by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, plans to invest $3.8bn in sugar and rice, and $800m in dairy production in the next three years as the company seeks to expand and deal with a shortage of dollars in its home market of Nigeria. The conglomerate plans to increase its production of sugar to 1.5-million tonnes a year by 2020 from 100,000 tonnes now and is seeking to add 1-million tonnes of rice, Edwin Devakumar, executive director at Dangote’s industries unit, said in an interview in Lagos on Tuesday, Nigeria’s commercial hub. The company also plans to have 50,000 head of cattle producing 500-million litres of milk a year by 2019, he said. A lack of foreign exchange means companies struggle to pay for imported goods, increasing the burden on local agriculture to meet demand for food from Nigeria’s population of more than 180-million, Devakumar said. "All raw sugar has to be imported today; same thing for flour milling." Dangote, whose cement unit...
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