We Must Ditch Health Tourism, Make Our Own Drugs — Dangote

Aliko Dangote, Chairman of the Dangote Group, has emphasized the urgent need for Nigeria to curb its reliance on medical tourism and shift focus towards domestic pharmaceutical production.

Speaking at the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event in Lagos on Wednesday, Dangote underscored the importance of building a healthcare system robust enough to serve all Nigerians — including the wealthy — within the country.

He noted that achieving this goal requires strategic partnerships, including collaboration with philanthropist Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, to strengthen local capacity for medical care and drug manufacturing.

“What we need to do is to make sure we stop this health tourism and we should now get in to start producing our own drugs,” Dangote said while speaking during a panel discussion at the event.

“We should now make sure that when we are sick, we don’t have to travel abroad, all of us, but we need to do a partnership with Bill (Gates).”

Africa’s richest man recalled that the Dangote Foundation through partnership with the Gates Foundation has helped to end Polio in Nigeria and did quite a lot in improving nutrition.

In terms of business, Dangote said that his company has done a lot by reversing a lot of things. According to him, Nigeria used to be the second largest importer of cement in the world but now it exports cement more than any other African country.

He also highlighted how farmers previously struggled to access fertilizer, but today, he has built the second-largest fertilizer plant in the world from the ground up.

“So, Nigeria now, not only export, we actually export 37% of our fertilizer to the United States of America,” he said.

Aliko Dangote highlighted a major milestone in Nigeria’s energy sector, declaring that his company had accomplished what no one else had: the construction of a 650,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery. He revealed that in May 2025 alone, the Dangote Refinery successfully exported 400,000 metric tons of petrol.

Dangote noted that this breakthrough has effectively ended Nigeria’s dependence on imported petrol, marking a transformative shift in the country’s energy self-sufficiency.

Speaking at the Goalkeepers event — hosted for the first time in Lagos by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — Dangote joined global leaders, policymakers, and development advocates to evaluate progress toward the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Among the prominent attendees were Bill Gates, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and Gombe State Governor Inuwa Yahaya, underscoring the event’s high-level significance.

Africa Today News, New York