Invest: Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote met Zimbabwean President
Emmerson Mnangagwa to discuss business prospects.
Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote’s visit to Zimbabwe to pursue $1 billion worth of business prospects was a ray of light for a country whose economy has been in ruins for more than two decades.
Dangote’s interests in the Southern African country include fertiliser manufacturing, energy (mainly coal mining), cement production, and fuel.
“We have signed an agreement between Zimbabwe and Dangote Group to do various investments in various sectors, some of which, of course, are in cement, some of it in power generation, and some of it in a pipeline to bring petroleum products,” he told journalists after meeting President Emmerson Mnangagwa at State House in the capital Harare this week.
The biggest investment could be a pipeline that would link Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, Bulawayo, to Walvis Bay in Namibia, where the Dangote Group is working on plans to build a large fuel storage facility expected to hold 1.6 million barrels of petrol and diesel, thereby reducing Southern Africa’s reliance on fuel imports from Europe and Asia.
This not Dangote’s first visit; the previous one was in 2015, when Zimbabwe was still in the midst of a years-long onslaught of international condemnation over human rights violations, corruption, and democratic shortcomings, all of which contributed to targeted sanctions from the United States. Global rating agencies had written the country off.
Dangote’s arrival a decade ago could have been that proverbial medicine prescribed by the doctor for Zimbabwe. Still red tape, numerous disagreements, and the absence of security guarantees for his investment deterred him.
On his return this week, he found a different environment, with the positives including a year-old stable currency, the Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG), record gold production and the International Monetary Fund projecting strong economic growth of around 6%. This informed Dangote’s decision to return to give the country another chance.
“There’s been quite a lot of change between when we came and now. The government is solid; when you look at what His Excellency has done in turning the economy around, that has given us the confidence that, look, this is the right time for us to come and invest,” he said. “When you pass an exam, people have to come and give you a good mark. His Excellency has passed that exam, that’s why we’re here.”
But for ordinary Zimbabweans driven to cynicism after years of state corruption under Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF party, pessimism persists.
“We are happy on one hand; someone even said the [Nigerian national football team] ‘Super Eagle’ had landed, but then we started debating: What if Dangote’s money is abused by the elite?” speculated Stevenson Dhlamini, an economics lecturer at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo.“He’s the first notable real investor that has come to Zimbabwe in a long time; the rest are treasure hunters. Therefore, we can’t afford to treat him like a treasure hunter when he’s the golden egg.”
Even if a fraction of the projects targeted by Dangote were to succeed, this would create hundreds of jobs and give a much-needed boost to an economy where most people work in the informal sector and residents grapple with chronic shortages of electricity, water, and other resources.
The managing director of Zimbabwe Electricity and Distribution Company was suspended last month after a power outage in parliament forced Mnangagwa to deliver 10 minutes of his State of the Nation address in darkness.
“Dangote has structured businesses; even if the looters manage to get a slice of the pie from the business’s operating income, there still will be structured benefits for the population to an extent,” Dhlamini said. “In Zimbabwe, one person has about five to eight dependents; one Dangote investment could support more than 100 000 people.”