No Foreigner Can Make Africa Great- Dangote

Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote has asserted that the power to make Africa great and strong economically does not reside in foreigners and their investments but in the continent itself.

He thus wants the continent to wake up from that daydreaming to the realities of life.

Speaking at the recently ended 31st African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) Annual Meetings (AAM) in Bahamas, Dangote said, “We as Africans should not be deceived. No foreigner can come and make your continent great. It must be a domestic investor. Domestic investments are what actually attract foreign investments.”

“There is a saying that when you import things into your country, you are importing poverty, exporting jobs out so we have to stop it,” he added as he called for value addition to raw materials produced in the continent before exportation.

He also called for the utilization of the African Union and other regional blocs to establish and increase trading among Africans, something he said the West is manoeuvring against.

“What I would like to see is for us to now have a very strong Africa where the intra-trade is going to be about 65-70%. Because what they have done and what they have achieved to do is to make sure that they encourage us to disagree with each other which is not right.”

He continued, “We have the regional markets, we should have them to work. We have ECOWAS working but maybe we have one person that is messing around here and there and we can sit down and talk to them about the benefit of having an AfCFTA. Having an AfCFTA is going to help the countries such that when they produce goods, they have the market for it.”

“Majority of the Western world when they want to enter into agreement, they try to do what is called ‘divide and rule’. Rather than agreeing with the African Union, they go to the weaker countries and sign an agreement that is not favourable.”