Nigeria’s Dangote Group has officially launched a 20,000 hectare rice production project, under which outgrowers will cultivate 8,000 hectares and the group will cultivate 12,000 hectares, designed to support the country in becoming self-sufficient by 2018, according to All Africa.

 

The project, which is being carried out by Dangote Rice Limited, is expected to expand to six other Nigerian states, according to a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the federal government and Dangote, who is increasing his group’s focus on the potential for increasing agricultural production in the face of a slowing oil economy. Speaking at the launch of the Dangote Rice Outgrowers Scheme, Dangote Group President, Alhaji Aliko Dangote announced that the group was planning to eventually scale the rice project up to a total of 120,000 hectares across the country by 2020.

 

For the years 2013 and 2014, imports of sugar, wheat, rice, and fish accounted for 93% of the country’s total cost of imports. In the case of rice, the country needs 6.8 million tons of rice per year to meet demand, but current output stands at 2.6 million tons. In response, the national government has created investment incentives to drive up production with the goal of eliminating imports by 2018.

 

“I made it clear that, agriculture was one of my government cardinal points and we are ready to collaborate with private investors in achieving the desire[d] goals,” said the state governor Alhaji Badaru Abubakar Badaru. “The project we are launching today is one of the numerous projects we intend to embark in collaboration with private investors from within and outside the country, and we have already signed memorandum with many of them."

 

“Before the discovery of oil, our economic was built around potentials from our palm oil, groundnut, cotton, and rubber plantations,” said Dangote, reports the Osun Defender. Now the price of oil has plummeted from a peak of $116 per barrel in June 2014 to as low as $29 per barrel in January 2016, this means there is huge loss of revenue to the government.”