The Chairman of Dangote Cement, Aliko Dangote, has reiterated his plea to the Federal Government to urgently adopt concrete roads (made of cement and aggregates instead of bitumen) in the country.

Africa s richest man said it would be to the benefit of Nigerians if the government embraced the option of using concrete for roads in the country. Aside from being very cheap, he said concrete roads were more durable with near zero maintenance cost.

Dangote said, “We are pushing for Nigeria to do concrete roads. It is cheaper to do a concrete road that will last 50 years than to do a bitumen road.
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“It will also help in eliminating corruption, because if you go and build a bitumen road, it will have to be adequately maintained unlike a concrete road that is very durable.”

Dangote Cement, according to a statement, has just expanded its frontiers to Asia by constructing a three-million-metric-tonne per annum plant in Nepal as part of its investment of $4.34bn in 10 African countries.

The company is currently in 15 African countries, excluding Kenya, Niger and Mali, which are new projects, the statement added.

Its current total capacity stands at 48mmtpa, out of which Nigeria alone has the largest chunk of 29.3mmtpa.

Dangote had recently said, “We are not only building cement plants in Africa, we have gone far away to Nepal to build a three-million-metric-tonne cement plant capacity and by the time all these our new projects are completed in the next two years, Dangote Cement will have more than 70 million capacity, but we are not going to stop there; hopefully, by 2020, our targets is to get to somewhere around 100 million tonnes capacity.

“I can assure you that Africa will not lack cement now and even in the future. Africa will be self -sufficient rather than be a dumping ground for other manufacturers of cement.”

The new plants for which agreements were signed recently with Sinoma were the 3.0mmtpa in Nepal, 2.5mmtpa in Ethiopia, 3.0mmtpa in Kenya 1&2; 1.5mmtpa in Zambia; 1.5mmtpa in Senegal, 1.5mmtpa in Niger; and 1.5mmtpa each in Mali, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana.