Dangote targets 25,000 hectares of rice in Sokoto
Dangote Rice, a subsidiary of Dangote Group, is set to launch in Sokoto State its multi-million naira 25,000 hectares of rice outgrower scheme with a prospect of hundreds of employment opportunities for the rural communities.
By year-end 2017, Dangote Rice plans to produce 225,000MT of parboiled, milled white rice. This will allow us to satisfy 4% of the total market demand within 1 year. Our model can then be successfully scaled to produce 1,000,000MT of milled rice in order to satisfy 16 per cent of the domestic market demand for rice over the next five years, it said.
President of the Group, Aliko Dangote, disclosed at the weekend that the company will on Wednesday, flag off with a pilot project of 500ha by Goronyo dam, in Goronyo community. Goronyo dam is the second largest in the country, after Kainji.
The flag off ceremony which will be performed by the governor of the state, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, will witness seedlings being distributed to the primary local farmers who will in turn plant the seed after which Dangote Rice company would purchase the harvest from them for milling and final processing.
Statistics from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) estimates that rice demand in Nigeria reached 6.3 million MT in 2015, with only 2.3 million MT of that demand satisfied by local production.
