Dangote Cement Plc has inducted almost 200 newly trained engineers and other professionals into its workforce following the successful completion of its Graduate Trainee Programme, reaffirming the company’s to job creation, skills development, and local capacity building in Nigeria.
The trainees, drawn from various engineering, finance, IT and other disciplines, were formally inducted over the weekend after completing an intensive 18 month training programme which entails both classroom and on – the – job learning was conducted at the Dangote Academy and across 14 plants locations in Nigeria and the Head Office.
The Graduate Trainee Programme is structured development journey designed to groom high potential professionalism for future leadership roles through cross functional exposure, classroom instruction, executive mentorship and hands on project execution.
During the programme, the trainees were deploys across Dangote Cement plants and operational location, where they acquired practical industry experience and benefited from mentorship of seasioned professionals within the Organisation. The company noted that several of the trainees have been integrated across it Cement operations in Nigeria and other Africa countries.
Dangote Cement stated that the induction of the engineers reflects it sustained commitment to providing meaningful employment opportunities and strengthening indigenous technical experts across its operations.
In addition to the induction ceremony, the company honoured outstanding staff with Long Service Awards and Hall of Fame Employee Awards in recognition of their dedication and consistent demonstration of Dangote’s core values of customers focus entrepreneurship, excellence, and leadership.
The award recipients, who received substantial monetary rewards, have each served the company for minimum of five years.
Speaking at the ceremony held in Lagos, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Cement Plc, Mr. Arvind Pathak said the event was organized to celebrate employees who have made a significant contributions to the company’s growth and success.
“We are honouring some of our staff for their long service to the company, and we are also celebrating our graduate trainees who are officially rounding off their induction programme,” Pathak said.
He commended employees for their resilience despite prevailing economic challenges, noting Dangote Cement recorded strong performance in 2025 inspite of difficult operating environment.
“Despite the economic turbulence, your resilience , tenacity enable us to overcome numerous challenges and achieve our objectives, more importantly, I thank you for your commitment and high performance, which has helped us to retain our position as the dominant player in the Cement sector not only in Nigeria but across Africa,” he stated.
Pathak added that Dangote Cement remains Africa’s leading cement producers and is targeting a production capacity of 90 million tonnes per annum across the continent by 2030. “Through our collective determination we have eliminated Nigeria’s dependence on Imported cement and transformed the country into a net exporter of cement to several neighbouring nations,” he said.
Also speaking at the event, the Acting Group Human Resources Officer, Mr. Ahmed Ladan Gobir described the Graduate Trainee Programme as a strategic initiative aimed at equipped newly graduates engineers with world class skills and deep industry exposure.
“Through initiative such as our Graduate Trainee Programme, we are providing young engineers with the platform to build meaningful careers, contribute to national development, and emerge as the next generation of Africa Industrial leaders.
Recognizing four exceptional graduate trainees, the Programme Coordinator, Mr. Iyas H Abdul Kareem, said the awardees demonstrated outstanding hands on industrial competence through out the programme. According to him, their contributions included improving reporting and customer administration system; undertaken raw and cement mill main drive alignments; carrying out pre heater fan dynamic balancing; and developing template for documenting and tracking key plant performance indicators ( ICPIC).
The four Engineers — Engr. Mary Nnana, Engr. Ahmad Sonusi Abdullahi, Engr. Ahmed Rufai Ahmed and Engr. Ebenezer Afonga – also played a key roles in the installation and commissioning of MIS servers at the Obajana Plant, as well as supporting the deployment of cement mill optimisation systems at the Obajana and Okpella plants.
