Aliko Dangote says his group intends to invest more than 10 billion dollars in Africa’s power sector over the next three to four years, and may cancel one or two planned businesses, including steel, to free up the money.
The president of Dangote Industries Limited made the disclosure in an interview with Al Jazeera uploaded on Monday, 21 September 2026. He framed the plan around what he described as a coming shift on the continent. “In the next three, four years, there will be a major transformation in Africa. And that’s why we’re looking at power,” he said.
On the scale of the commitment, Dangote was direct. “We are going to invest in power. We want to, actually, there is one or two businesses that we might cancel, like steel, and we will put in the money. We want to invest over 10 billion dollars alone in power,” he said. He did not name the countries, projects or timeline for deploying the funds.
His case rests on the continent’s electricity gap. Dangote said more than 600 million Africans still lack access to power, calling the situation one Africans should not allow. The figure is consistent with tracking by the International Energy Agency and the World Bank, which have put the number of people without electricity across sub-Saharan Africa at around 600 million in recent years, the largest access deficit of any region.
Dangote tied the investment to growth and, unusually, to politics. He argued that reliable supply would lift industrial activity and investment, and said leaders who deliver power would find re-election easier. “You know, some politicians, if they work hard, they have a plan, when you deliver power, you don’t need to go for campaign when you’re going for the election,” he said, adding that “power is growth.”
The announcement came alongside a separate Bloomberg interview in which Dangote linked the group’s direction to the ongoing initial public offering of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals, which he said gives Africans a chance to invest directly in the continent’s largest industrial project. That offer opened on the Nigerian Exchange on 14 September, running 4.1 billion shares at N525 each to raise about N2.15 trillion, and closes on 13 October.
He also set out fresh expansion plans beyond power. Dangote said the group would take its fertiliser business public in 2028, with the aim of becoming the world’s largest producer, lifting urea output from three million tonnes to 12 million tonnes and adding 2.2 million tonnes of DAP fertiliser, supported by planned potash and phosphate mines. He said the expanded business could supply more than 40 per cent of Africa’s fertiliser demand and reduce dependence on imports, a vulnerability he linked to supply disruptions after the Russia-Ukraine war. He added that the refinery itself would be pushed from 700,000 barrels a day towards 1.4 million barrels a day.
The power pledge would deepen a footprint the group has been building across several markets. Dangote already holds cement and related interests in multiple African countries, and in late 2025 was reported to be in talks around a roughly one billion dollar package in Zimbabwe covering cement, coal mining and power generation. A move of the size he now describes would place the group among the larger private investors in African electricity, a sector long constrained by weak generation, limited transmission and unreliable supply.
For Nigeria, the stakes are familiar. Decades of underinvestment have left the national grid unable to meet demand, forcing households and firms to rely heavily on costly self-generation. Whether Dangote’s stated intent translates into built capacity will depend on financing structure, regulatory terms and execution, none of which he detailed. The comments set out an ambition rather than a confirmed programme, and the group has not published project specifics, so the figures and timelines remain the businessman’s own projections until backed by announced deals.