The Tanzanian government has awarded a coal mining license covering about 9.98 square kilometers in the Ngaka area to the local unit of Nigeria’s Dangote Cement as part of plans to lower the company’s production costs and ease disruptions caused by energy shortages. According to Tanzania’s energy and minerals ministry, the process of allocating a coal mining area to the Dangote cement factory was completed last weekend.
Dangote wants to double Tanzania’s annual output of cement to 6 million tonnes (MT). As Africa’s biggest cement producer, Dangote Cement has an annual production capacity of 43.6 MT. It targets an output of between 74 MT and 77 MT by the end of 2019 and 100 MT of capacity by 2020.
The Tanzanian President, John Magufuli, last week gave the government officials a seven-day ultimatum to allocate a coal mining area to Dangote within the mineral-rich Ngaka coal fields, which are licensed to another company.