Post #129

🇳🇬Nigeria: To Build Industry and Lose It One day we’ll have a separate discussion about how Nigeria built - and then lost - its industrial capacity in the 1980-2000s. But today’s topic is narrower: how neglect and mismanagement cost Nigeria ten years of disruption at its only aluminium smelter. 🌍 On October 21, Nigeria’s Ministry of Powerannouncedplans to connect the country’s only aluminium plant - the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) - to the national electricity grid. ⏩The plant is owned by the Russian aluminium giant RUSAL and has not operated since 2014, due to the government’s inability to ensure a stable gas supply to the plant’s power station — coupled with poor political management.⏪ 🔸 The factory was originally a joint Nigeria–Germany–US venture, launched in 1997, but closed its doors just two years later due to a lack of electricity. 🔸 Between 2006 and 2008, the plant underwent privatization and was sold to RUSAL - no sooner had the company’s operations stabilized than Nigerian authorities made a U-turn, revoking the privatization in favor of the American firm BFI Group. 🔸 The smelter then plunged into endless bureaucratic disputes, which, combined with the government’s persistent failure to provide sufficient gas, ultimately buried the project. And now, ministerial officials visit the barely alive smelter, promising something that should have been guaranteed at the very planning stage — electricity, without which NO aluminium plant can ever exist. When we speak about resource extraction and local processing, we should not forget that sometimes the much-needed factories and refineries have already been built by out forebearers and only need a handful of competent management to kick off. Devils Below