Dangote Group will invest a further 779 million rands ( $101.71m) to up its stake in South Africa’s Sephaku Cement to 64%.

The cash will help fund Sephaku’s new 2.2 million tons a year cement plant scheduled to come on stream in 2012, Nigeria’s leading industrial conglomerate said in a statement on the weekend.

Dangote had first invested 3 billion rand in Sephaku Cement in 2008 to help finance a plant that was originally expected to start production in 2010.

Sephaku Cement is a unit of Sephaku Holdings Ltd, a South African black-owned minerals exploration, development and investment company.

Under the agreement, Dangote will provide guarantees Sephaku Cement needs to secure debt funding for the new plant, fund any over-runs on the project with a loan of about 265 million rand, and finance the company’s limestone exploration programme in Western Cape and Limpopo Province.

Dangote controls about two-thirds of the Nigerian cement market, and has interests in cement plants in Ghana, Senegal, Zambia, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equitorial Guinea and Ethiopia.

Source: Business Day Nigeria