Sustainability Week: Dangote goes waste-to-wealth, tree planting initiatives - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet:

Activities marking the 2019 Global Sustainability Week, saw the employees of the pan-African conglomerate, the Dangote Industries Limited coming up with an initiative tagged “Waste to Wealth initiative” to manage waste disposal while generating income and giving back to communities wherein they operate, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The Company marked the Sustainability Week with the theme: “Our Community, Our Passion” with various activities held in the Lagos and across its Business Units and plants. These activities focused on investment programmes directed towards turning waste to wealth, and reviving reading culture in young children in host communities.

In Lagos, over 200 Sustainability Champions and employee volunteers across the business units, assisted five international facilitators to train the children on turning the most insignificant materials and waste in the environment into tangible assets of economic value to the nation.

Dangote employees took the initiative to St. George Primary School and Aunty Ayo International School in Ikoyi, where the facilitators, with additional help from the volunteers, trained the children on how to manage their wastes and create sustainable products that are marketable from their everyday generated wastes.

Speaking on the initiative, the Group Chief Sustainability and Governance, Dangote Industries Limited, Dr. Ndidi Nnoli, said the company’s sustainability approach is driven by a desire to contribute and impact positively towards the development of host communities and the society at large.

According to her, the 2019 Sustainability Week is directed towards safeguarding the environment by educating the host communities on how to turn waste to wealth to achieve sustainable development.

Isaac Oyimah/Editor

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AU, Dangote, others for Africa Business Health Forum - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet:

Top African leaders including Heads of States, Ministers, CEOs as well as representatives from the African Union and United Nations will converge at the inaugural Africa Business: Health Forum (AB:HF) (www.AfricaBusinessHealthForum.com) taking place in Ethiopia on 12th February 2019 on the margins of the 32nd African Union Summit, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The Forum will unify Africa’s key decision makers in exploring opportunities for catalyzing growth in the continent’s economy, through business partnerships to invest in the health sector.

The inter-relationship between the health of employees and economic growth is increasingly taking center stage in many African countries, and business is being pushed to exploring how to maximize shareholder value as a complex interplay between financial, human, social and environmental return.

African business entrepreneurs are waking up to the reality that good health is good business, and investing in health is both a business and social imperative, with studies showing that by 2030, business opportunities in the health and wellness sector will reach $1.8 trillion in current prices.

Investing in African health systems is an opportunity to accelerate economic development and growth, contribute to saving millions of lives, prevent life-long disabilities, and move countries closer to achieving SDGs and Africa’s Agenda 2063.

“From a business standpoint, we are beginning to see the opportunities that could be created by focusing on improving and investing in health,” says Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, a renowned financier and Co- Chair, GBCHealth. “There is a need to close the gap on the inequality of life in Africa from a healthcare standpoint and we must look to develop a universal plan that shifts the needle as far as healthcare in Africa is concerned. Health must cease being a source of pain, and become a source of prosperity instead.”

The AB:HF is the vision of GBCHealth, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and the Aliko Dangote Foundation, with the objective of driving business leadership, strengthening partnerships, and facilitating investments to change the face of healthcare in Africa.

The Forum will culminate in the launch of the African Business Coalition for Health (ABCHealth), a coalition that will mobilize a core group of private sector champions through a coordinated platform to advance health outcomes and shape health systems across Africa.

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War over Edo cement holdings: BUA says Dangote claims stink

NaijaAgroNet:

The war of words has continued between BUA group and Dangote group over claims on its cement holding in Edo State, just as BUA says Dangote claims stink, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The Group Head, Corporate Communications, Otega Ogra told NaijaAgroNet that latest claims by the Management of Dangote Group which is being syndicated to various new publications related to the ownership and operations of BUA’s mining sites in Obu, Okpella, Edo State, fall short of facts.

This latest statement by Dangote Group, Ogra noted, stinks of desperation in its continued attempt to disregard the judicial process and scheme a viable competitor out of business as has been their legendary antecedent. We thus wish to reiterate once again that whilst we do not want to join issues with anyone on this matter as it is currently before a court of competent jurisdiction, we are however compelled to use the opportunity presented by Edwin Devakumar’s reckless statements to clarify the cycle of misinformation being proliferated.

Specifically responding to Edwin Devakumar of Dangote Group’s claim of BUA operating on ML2541 in Okene, Kogi State, “we wish to restate that BUA does not have any operations whatsoever in Okene, Kogi State where the purported ML2541 is situated. Our Mining operations are limited to Obu-Okpella, Edo State for which licenses ML18912 & 18913 were issued and revalidate by the same ministry in a publication.”

These licenses, he said, have been owned, operated and fulfilled by BUA and its predecessors-in-title since 1976, as it is also a notorious fact that “we have exercised total control and possession over the mining area covered by the above mining leases since 1976 when we operated under the name of Bendel Cement Company Limited. We are thus wont to excuse Edwin’s claims to a lack of basic knowledge and understanding of the geography of Nigeria but he will be better served if he seeks professional opinion in critically understanding the geography of Nigeria or he should otherwise refer to documents from the boundary commission which clearly delineates boundaries within Nigeria.”

BUA group therefore asked, “Why is Dangote, an international company which is also listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, so averse to letting the rule of the law and judicial process take its course? The court has maintained that Status Quo be maintained (This includes BUA’s current ownership of our mines in Edo State) but the management of Dangote Group Dangote, as has been their strategy in the past to other companies in competition with them, is still seeking to out-muscle competition through backdoor means rather than let the court decide. If anyone is not satisfied, they should write to the courts as an independent arbiter for an interpretation of “maintaining status quo” rather than spread misinformation in the court of public opinion.

“It is public knowledge that neither Dangote nor AICO or anyone for that matter can claim ownership of ML2541 as was stated in a court injunction by a Federal High Court sitting in Lokoja in suit FHC/LK/CS/25/2017 between Alhaji Mohammed Otaru Adeika & Ors. Versus AICO Ado Ibrahim and Company Limited, Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel, The Mining Cadestre Office and Dangote Industries Plc. How then can they continue to claim in obvious disregard of that court order that the ML2541 belongs to them?   No one is above the law.

“The antecedent of Dangote Plc in trying to outmuscle competition is not in doubt. Various cases abound within and outside the cement industry – one of which was their taking over of the limestone deposits of another competing entity in the south-south region of Nigeria until they ceeded him 25 per cent of their company. This was in turn resold to them for hundreds of millions of dollars. Or is it the case of Ibeto whose business was almost driven under but for the prompt intervention of the then late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Or is it the case of Polo House Jetty Tincan previously owned by his uncle, Usman Dantata, whose License was revoked by NPA and reallocated to Dangote on the same day in order to prevent a sugar refinery to be sited there by a competitor.

“The facts of the matter as far as we are concerned are that BUA’s operations are in Obu, Okpella, Edo State and not Okene Kogi. We once again ask that all parties should wait for the court to resolve the issue. We will not be cowed or intimidated and will continue to seek redress through the proper legal channels,” BUA group submitted.

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Dangote in fresh mining mess, attracts N2.7bn fine

NaijaAgroNet:

A Federal High Court sitting in Lokoja, Kogi State Capital has ordered Dangote Group, Dangote Cement Plc, Obajana Cement Plc, Dangote Industries and their subsidiaries in a judgement against them, to pay the sum of N2,697,125,000 billion in a mining dispute brought against Dangote by a mining firm, Quest Two Enterprises Ltd, reports NaijaAgroNet.

In his judgment, the trial judge Justice Ayua of the Federal High Court, Lokoja averred that the Dangote General Manager, Mr. Victor Mohan, who was also the sole witness admitted under cross-examination that his employers, Dangote Group, effectively shut down operations of the company by dismantling power lines belonging to the company and disrupting their operations. Despite agreeing to pay compensation for these acts to the plaintiffs, the judge also noted that the defendants failed to live up to the terms of the agreement to pay any compensation to the plaintiffs.

The court also dismissed Dangote’s counter-claims that the actions of the plaintiff amounted to trespassing on their mining lease area. He consequently declared that Dangote should pay the sum N2.7billion as damages and issued a Garnishee order Nisi against 21 banks to satisfy the judgment debt.

This new development comes as Dangote is fiercely battling another mining dispute with cement giant, BUA Cement, in which the Chairman of BUA recently wrote an open letter to the President claiming that Dangote in collaboration with the Ministry of Mines & steel illegally entered its Mining areas with a view to disrupting and sabotaging operations at BUA’s Okpella cement plant despite a court order restraining Dangote and the Ministry from claiming and or moving to the site. The cases comes up for hearing shortly at the Federal High Court in Benin.

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Dangote rice targets 1m tonnes in 2018, launches youth graduates farm project @Kogi

NaijaAgroNet:

A multi-million Naira Youth Farming Initiative that will engage teeming unemployed Nigerian graduates in rice farming has been launched by the Dangote Rice Limited in Kogi State, reports NaijaAgroNet.

This is coming as the company says its preparing to hit the market with One million metric tons of Dangote rice in 2018.

A press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet by Francis Awowole-Browne, informed that the Dangote Youth Rice Farm project, mainly an out-grower scheme for youths only was flagged off at the Lower Niger River Basin Authority, Kampe, Ejiba in Yagba West local government area of the state where youth have embarked on rice cultivation over 100 hectares of land.

He quoted Group Executive Director at Dangote, Mr. Devakumar Edwin, as saying that the rice farm project, was preceded by a special training for the youth farmers on the dynamics of the rice farming, will see the youths cultivating the rice paddy on a 100 hectares of land, which will then be bought over by the company for processing.

Under the scheme, he explained that the Dangote Rice Company would provide the seedling, anti-pest-chemicals, and fertilizers while the Basing Authority provided the land for the young farmers.

Mr. Edwin explained that the project is a new dimension to the efforts by the pan-African conglomerate, the Dangote Group, at ensuring food security and creating job opportunities in Nigeria especially for the youths saying this Initiative is in line with the vision and commitment of Dangote Industries Limited to create a new generation of agri-preneur that will revolutionize the Nigerian agricultural sector.

“We believe skill, knowledge, enabling environment, collaboration and linkages along the value chain are driving forces for economic empowerment and social development in line with the Federal Government policies. This project will address the skills gap in local rice production among unemployed youths by providing technical, organisational and financial requirements.”

He said it would also enhance domestic rice production to cover the large gap between demand and domestic production and to increase self-sufficiency of Nigeria and substitute imported rice by quality Nigerian rice brands.

Mr. Edwin disclosed that most modern rice mills in Nigeria presently operate at not more than 20% capacity utilization due mainly to lack of good quality paddy and that Dangote Rice aimed to change this situation developing and adapting out-grower schemes. According to him, the Dangote Rice Company plans to set up a 150,000 metric tons integrated rice mill and sale one million mt of parboiled rice by 2018.

The Dangote Group boss stated that the decision of the management to start the project was driven by two factors, one of which is the need for youth employment through empowerment to go into agriculture. “The youths are more vulnerable to crimes and other social vices when they have nothing to engage them and this in turn affect the nation negatively.

“The second factor is the need to strengthen the on-going efforts at producing rice for self-sufficiency so that we can save foreign exchange. By the time we will be doing one million metric tons of rice next year, no less than three million jobs would been created along the value chain.”

Mr. Edwin said the Kogi pilot project will cover four season of two years and will be launched in four other states soon.

In his own remark, the Managing Director of Dangote Rice, Mr. Robert Coleman urged the youth farmers to concentrate on the project and pay attention to details so that they would come out with good paddy yield.

He congratulated the farmers for the decision to partner with Dangote Rice noting that they have a solid source of livelihood for themselves and members of their families if they give their all for the success of the scheme.

The Coordinator of the youth farmers, Umar Etudaye thanked the management of Dangote Rice for believing in them and engaging them for the project. He promised that they would deliver on the mandate given to them on the project.

He stated that the scheme is a practical step towards nation building because it’s the youths, who constitute 40 per cent of the population, would build the nation and only the youths that are empowered and gainfully employed could do that.

Ogo Nebenanya/GEE

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AfDB President, Adesina predicts Dangote to become largest rice exporter in 2021

NaijaAgroNet:

The president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has predicted that the Dangote group may become the largest exporter of rice in the world by 2021, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Speaking at the Mo Ibrahim Forum in Morocco over the weekend, Adesina said Africa must focus on agriculture to drive growth and create jobs on the continent.

“I remember when I was minister of Agriculture in Nigeria. Aliko Dangote was there, and he was our biggest importer at the time, and he and I used to have all the time to dialogue,” Adesina said.

“One day, I was in my office, about 10 O’clock, Aliko walks in, Ngozi was minister of finance. Aliko bangs on my door and said ‘minister I came to see you’, and I said ‘what are we going to disagree on this time? He said no, I have actually looked at the policies, and the policies you put in place for import substitution are very right policies. So, I have changed my business model from being an importer to being a local producer,” he said.

Adesina narrated the role Dangote played in his happiest day as a minister in Nigeria.

“I said what exactly are you going to do. He said I will put in $300 million into producing and processing rice in Nigeria. I said yippee! I went home, I told my wife, my best day as minister,” he said.

“He comes back three months after that, he says I have changed my mind, I said ‘what in the world happened?’ He said no, I have changed my mind from $300 million to a billion dollars.

“If they continue that policy, he would probably be the single largest producer of rice in the world, in about four years. The reason why I was so excited about that is that agriculture is cool, agriculture is a business…agriculture pays.”

Adesina was named Forbes Africa Person of the Year 2013, while Dangote won the same award in 2014.

It would be recalled that a tripartite agreement put together by the Dangote Rice limited to create jobs for 16,000 outgrower rice farmers in Sokoto was recently signed with the Sokoto State government and rice growers in the country after which he launched the rice outgrowers scheme in Sokoto.

Aliko Dangote, the Chairman of Dangote Rice Limited, said he was moved to go into rice cultivation because of the genuine interest of the Federal government to revive agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, and reduce importation of foods that could be produced locally.

He lamented that Nigeria consumes 6.5 Meric tonnes (mtn) of rice which costs the nation over 2 billion dollars annually, pointing out that it is heartening that the government now has policy direction that encourages private sector’s active participation in agriculture.

He disclosed then that “In the next three years we want to produce one million tons of quality rice and make it available and affordable to the people. We hope to do 150, 000 ha and when we are done, Nigeria will not have anything to do with importation of rice.

“Dangote Rice outgrowers scheme is committed to creating significant number of jobs, increasing the incomes of smallholders farmers and ensuring food security in the country by providing high quality seeds, fertilizers and agro-chemicals as well as technical assistance on best agricultural practice to farmers.

"This Scheme will help to diversify the economy, alleviate poverty and reduce the nation's import bill. The scheme has been designed as a one stop solution for the rice value chain," Dangote declared.

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Dangote partners Rice Farmers, Sokoto Government

NaijaAgroNet:

A tripartite agreement led by the Dangote Rice Limited have been signed with rice farmers and Sokoto State government expected to boost rice production, even as Dangote group has decried huge forex on rice importation, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The partnership, NaijaAgroNet gathered is expected to create some 16,000 jobs for outgrower rice farmers in Sokoto State, so as to ensure the success of the scheme to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice cultivation.

The agreement, NaijaAgroNet  also reported, was signed during the launch of the Dangote rice outgrower scheme in Goronyo, Goronyo Local government, Sokoto State, which was witnessed by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar. Farmers were presented with rice seeds, fertilizers, nets, agro-chemicals.

Chairman of Dangote Rice Limited, Aliko Dangote said he was moved to go into rice cultivation because of the genuine interest of the Federal government to revive agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, and reduce importation of foods that could be produced locally.

He decried that Nigeria consumes 6.5 Metric tonnes of rice which costs the nation over 2 billion dollars annually, and pointed out that it is heartening that the government now has policy direction that encourages private sector’s active participation in agriculture.

“Buoyed by the policy direction of the federal government, we at Dangote decided to key into this by establishing Dan gone Rice Limited to partner with states to redress the present situation where a huge sumo forex is spent on importation of rice.

“In the next three years we want to produce one million tons of quality rice and make it available and affordable to the people. We hope to do 150, 000 ha and when we are done, Nigeria will not have anything to do with importation of rice.

“Dangote Rice outgrowers scheme is committed to creating significant number of jobs, increasing the incomes of smallholders farmers and ensuring food security in the country by providing high quality seeds, fertilizers and agro-chemicals as well as technical assistance on best agricultural practice to farmers.

“This Scheme will help to diversify the economy, alleviate poverty and reduce the nation’s import bill. The scheme has been designed as a one stop solution for the rice value chain,” he stated.

The Dangote Rice Project Director, Robert Coleman, said the Sokoto operation was a demonstration phase to familiarize the farming community with the programme, train extension workers and lead farmers as well as test modern technologies.

He noted that they would have 25,000 ha cultivated by nearly 50,000 outgrowers in 2017 in addition to hundreds of jobs expected to be created by the end of that year.

In his remarks, Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal expressed delight at the event, saying the coming of Dangote to invest in the state was as a result of his sustained effort towards inviting prospective investors to the state.

He said the state under the scheme, just as it had done with the federal government, would distribute nets, water pumping machines and fertiliser T subsidised prices to help the farmers have good yield.

The state Commissioner for Agriculture, Alhaji Umar Tambuwal, disclosed that the scheme would cover 10 local governments in the stated and that the state government is committing several millions of naira to support the famers in the scheme.

According to him, “the farmers participating in the 5000 ha pilot scheme, the state government is giving out free nets to fight against queue a birds during production which is costing the state N48 million. The state will release and sell 5000 units of water pump worth N170 million at a subsidised rate of N10, 000 each.

“We will also distribute 5000 bags rice seed (Faro 44) worth N32.5 million while fertilizer will be sold 50 per cent subsidised rate to complement the outgrower farmers.”

Sultan Muhammadu Sa'ad Abubakar however, commended President Buhari for his diversifying efforts, urging Nigerians to pray for him.

He commended the Sokoto State government for the encouragement and support being given to the outgrowers scheme, saying it is a thing of joy that the state is also involved by way of giving the famers some of the inputs needed so that the scheme could succeed.

The National President of Rice Farmers Association, Alhaji Aminu Goronyo described the scheme as one of the potential means of making rice available and at low cost to the people because the farmers are encouraged to put all their best into it.

He said he has no doubt the scheme would success because it a private sector driven and that given the pedigree of the Alhaji Dangote in business, he was sure there the scheme would be sustainable and sooner than later other states will key into it.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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Dangote to engage 50,000 youths in sugarcane market

Anthony Nwakaegho/NaijaAgroNet

Dangote Group is set to engage about 50,000 youths in sugarcane market following the acquisition of the 80000 hectares of land by company for sugarcane plantation from the Kebbi State Government.

The Kebbi, the state Commissioner for Agriculture, Alhaji Sani Kanya, dropped the hint in Kebbi, and said that the President of the group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote would soon lead a team of experts on sugarcane production  Kebbi State to meet with all stakeholders on the project which would be sited in Uru, Bagudo, Koko/Besse and Shanga local government areas.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that the famers in the state that partake in the project would benefit from improved sugarcane seedlings, fertilisers and modern production implements that would be given by the government.

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