On Monday, the Tanzanian government 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 the 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 tons. As Africa’s biggest cement producer, Dangote Cement has an annual production capacity of 43.6 million tons. It targets an output of between 74 million and 77 million tons by the end of 2019 and 100 million tons 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.

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