(Ecofin Agency) - Dangote Group plans to increase its sugar production to 1.5 million metric tons a year by 2020 from the current 100,000 tons. It also plans to add 1 million tons of rice to current production and have 50,000 cattle producing 500 million liters of milk a year by 2019.

To this end, the company will be investing $3.8 billion in sugar and rice and another $800 million in dairy production over the next three years, as it seeks to expand amid a dollar shortages issues. The Executive Director at Dangote’s industries unit, Edwin Devakumar, who revealed these plans in an interview on Tuesday, said: “All raw sugar has to be imported today, same thing for flour milling.”

Devakumar added that Dangote intends to cultivate 350,000 hectares of sugar cane and another 200,000 hectares for rice. The company has ordered five plants for sugar milling and 10 for rice from Switzerland to be located in the north of the country.

The Dangote group has been investing in agriculture ever since the Federal government announced plans to diversify away from oil, which accounts for 90% of the nation’s export earnings and revenue.

Anita Fatunji