Aliko Dangote, President of the Dangote Group, is calling on President Bola Tinubu to include refined petroleum products in the list of items banned under the Federal Government’s ‘Nigeria First’ policy.

Dangote made the request last week while addressing industry stakeholders at the Global Commodity Insights Conference on West African Refined Fuel Markets, organized by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) in partnership with S&P Global Insights.

Speaking at the conference, Dangote urged the Tinubu administration to apply the ‘Nigeria First’ policy—originally intended to bar public institutions from importing goods or services that can be sourced locally—to the petroleum sector. He insisted that the continued importation of petrol, diesel, and other refined products into Nigeria is discouraging local refining and driving away critical investment.

“The Nigeria First policy announced by His Excellency, President Bola Tinubu, should apply to the petroleum product sector and all other sectors,” Dangote said.

He argued that domestic refiners, including his $20 billion refinery in Lagos, are being undercut by the dumping of cheap, often toxic, fuel into the Nigerian market. Some of these imported fuels, according to him, would never be allowed into Europe or North America due to their substandard nature.

“We are now facing increased dumping of cheap, often toxic petroleum products… some of which are blended to substandard levels,” he said. “Due to the price caps on Russian petroleum products, discounted products produced in Russia or with discounted Russian crude find their way to Africa, severely undercutting our local production.”

Dangote went further to argue that Nigeria has already become a net exporter of refined fuel, revealing that between June and July 2025, his refinery exported approximately 1.35 billion liters of petrol.

Monopoly Concerns Resurface

But the demand has triggered immediate backlash from marketers, energy experts, and sections of the public, who accuse the billionaire of seeking to monopolize the oil sector, echoing similar accusations made against him in the cement industry.

Despite his assertion that the ban would protect local investment, many believe that the proposal reeks of monopolistic ambition. The request has revived longstanding concerns that Dangote is again attempting to control a critical sector of Nigeria’s economy, just as he is believed to have done in the cement industry, where his company has dominated market share for years amid allegations of regulatory capture and market manipulation.

“No, we cannot have a ban on petroleum imports. It’s not a legal ban. That would not be acceptable because we don’t have diverse sources for petroleum products. We can’t rely solely on the Dangote refineries. That would give a monopoly to a private individual,” an energy expert at the University of Lagos, Professor Dayo Ayoade, said, warning that it would promote monopolistic tendencies.

Many Nigerians, including oil marketers, have expressed concern that such a move would entrench Dangote’s dominance at the expense of competition and consumer welfare.

There is also concern that banning the importation of petroleum products contradicts the deregulation framework enshrined in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which mandates a liberalized downstream sector where marketers are free to source and sell products without price controls or import restrictions.

Marketers and Experts Push Back

Against this backdrop, independent marketers and downstream operators who spoke to The Punch swiftly rejected Dangote’s proposal, reiterating that it would kill competition, spike fuel prices, and destabilize the sector.

“We independent marketers will depart from that request. If the government does that, that means we will not be able to check inflation and monopoly, since it is the only refinery operating in the country now. We should continue to import even as we buy locally,” said Chinedu Ukadike, Publicity Secretary of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN).

“I heard that the NMDPRA stated clearly that Dangote cannot produce all the fuel that the country needs. We will appreciate it if the country allows importation to continue since we are not paying subsidy,” he added.

Ukadike also dismissed Dangote’s claim that importation would kill businesses and local refineries. He noted that although the country is no longer paying subsidies on fuel, allowing imports ensures price discovery and market checks.

“Importation won’t kill local businesses or refineries; it will strengthen them. It will ensure local refineries step up their game. I don’t agree with Dangote on this,” he said.

Billy Gillis-Harry, National President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlet Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), also opposed the idea.

“I don’t agree with Dangote. We are running a free economy. There’s no reason why any one company should have an overarching value on the entire industry,” he said.

He added that while the importation of locally available products like toothpicks or food items could be banned, refined petroleum products should remain open to market forces to ensure stability.

Protectionism vs. Deregulation

President Tinubu’s ‘Nigeria First’ policy, which restricts public procurement of foreign goods and services already available in Nigeria, is seen as a protectionist move to boost domestic industries. But experts argue that applying it to the petroleum sector—especially in a country that just exited fuel subsidy and enacted sweeping deregulation laws—would be illegal and economically self-defeating.

The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), passed in 2021, legally supports deregulation of the downstream sector and emphasizes market-driven pricing. A fuel import ban would contradict both the letter and the spirit of the PIA, potentially triggering investor flight.

While Dangote’s monopoly concerns have been widely criticized, his call for regulators to revoke inactive refinery licenses has received some support.

“On that side, I agree with him,” Ukadike said. “You can’t obtain a refinery license and use it to decorate your house. The nation needs more refineries to export more.”

Dangote, for his part, insists his refinery has the capacity to meet Nigeria’s needs and produce for export. He recently said the facility, currently operating at 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), will scale up to 700,000 bpd by December.

He explained that his request was not to monopolize the sector but to produce local investments. Africa’s richest man noted that those who have the resources to invest in Nigeria keep taking their resources outside the country while they criticize local investors.

“Let me take this opportunity to address concerns around monopoly and dominance. The reality is that too many people who have the means and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to our nation’s growth choose instead to criticize from the sidelines while investing their wealth abroad,” Dangote said.

His request to ban fuel imports comes just days after he stepped down as Chairman of Dangote Cement Plc to focus more on his $20 billion refinery and its supporting businesses in petrochemicals, fertilizer, and energy.

However, industry players say unless more refineries come onstream and market conditions become liberalized, any attempt to shut out fuel importation will be viewed not as patriotic but as an audacious play for market control.

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Alibaba has taken a major step into the consumer hardware market with the launch of its first AI-powered smart glasses, called Quark, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai.

The product, powered by the company’s Quark AI assistant and its proprietary Qwen large language model, positions Alibaba as a serious challenger to Meta, Xiaomi, and other players in the emerging smart wearables market.

The announcement marks Alibaba’s most aggressive move yet to bring its generative AI capabilities directly to consumers. Beyond software dominance, the Quark AI Glasses are designed to fuse Alibaba’s core businesses—ecommerce, navigation, and digital payments—into a wearable, intelligent product that interacts with the world in real time.

What the Quark AI Glasses Offer

The glasses are tailored for both everyday and business use. Key features include:

• Real-time translation of spoken languages
• Instant payment via QR codes using Alipay and integration with Taobao for on-the-spot price comparisons
• Turn-by-turn navigation through Alibaba’s Amap app
• Hands-free calling, voice control, and music playback
• Meeting transcription using Quark AI’s advanced speech-to-text functions

They also come with a Sony 12MP camera, with an advanced version featuring MicroLED waveguide lenses for augmented reality (AR) projections. The hardware runs on a dual-chip system—Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 for performance-heavy tasks and Bestechnic’s BES2800 chip for power-efficient operation (MLQ.ai).

A Strategic Leap Beyond the Cloud

With this release, Alibaba is attempting to shift from being primarily a cloud services and ecommerce company into a fully integrated AI-powered tech ecosystem. The Quark glasses are a physical gateway into that ecosystem, designed to be always-on, voice-driven, and contextually aware, leveraging the full capabilities of Alibaba’s AI model family.

The company recently unveiled multiple upgrades to its LLM offerings, including Qwen2.5-VL, the multimodal Omni-7B, and the advanced Qwen3 series. These models offer strong reasoning capabilities and are optimized for devices like the Quark glasses. The glasses are scheduled to go on sale in China by late 2025, with no pricing or global launch information announced yet.

Part of a Broader AI Arms Race

Alibaba’s foray into smart eyewear comes as Chinese technology firms intensify their efforts to develop self-reliant AI ecosystems, especially under the pressure of U.S. export controls that have limited access to high-end semiconductors. According to Reuters, two new AI alliances were also announced during WAIC—one for chipmakers and another for model developers—to deepen integration across China’s tech stack, from chips to deployment.

Analysts say this domestic push is vital, not only to counterbalance U.S. restrictions but also to reduce reliance on foreign software and hardware. Alibaba’s vertically integrated approach—pairing AI, payments, ecommerce, navigation, and now wearables—positions it to thrive in a closed-loop ecosystem.

Challenges Ahead

Despite its strong entrance, Alibaba faces stiff competition. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses continue to lead globally, and in China, companies like Xiaomi, Rokid, and Xreal have already launched their own AR wearables. Industry analysts caution that battery life, privacy, price point, and global usability could limit adoption unless Alibaba addresses these issues from the outset.

However, by leveraging its extensive ecosystem and AI expertise, Alibaba is uniquely positioned to create a differentiated offering that merges daily life, commerce, and computing.

But the Quark AI Glasses represent more than a new product. They are seen as a strategic hardware manifestation of Alibaba’s AI ambitions, aimed at transforming how people interact with the physical and digital worlds. They are also seen as part of China’s efforts to accelerate a self-sufficient AI and semiconductor ecosystem.

Huawei Technologies took center stage at China’s largest artificial intelligence event of the year, the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, underscoring its growing influence in the global chip race as Nvidia remained notably absent.

The move comes less than two weeks after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s high-profile visit to Beijing, sparking renewed hopes for the U.S. chipmaker’s return to the Chinese market.

Despite those hopes, Nvidia declined to participate in this year’s AI expo and offered no public explanation, even as it continues to face tight U.S. restrictions on advanced chip exports to China. The absence was jarring — especially given Nvidia’s towering presence in global AI development — and allowed Huawei to steal the spotlight with a bold showcase of its homegrown semiconductor muscle.

At the entrance of the Shanghai Expo Center, Huawei unveiled the hardware behind its new computing powerhouse, the Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD, linking 384 of its Ascend AI chips. The Chinese telecoms and tech conglomerate — already sanctioned and blacklisted by the U.S. — is positioning the new system as a domestic replacement for Nvidia’s cutting-edge GPUs, which have been largely barred from Chinese shores under Washington’s export controls.

Earlier in the year, analysts at SemiAnalysis suggested that although a single Ascend chip lacks the brute force of Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, Huawei compensates by packing significantly more chips into its servers, potentially delivering similar performance at the cost of higher power consumption.

Huang himself had acknowledged Huawei as “one of the most formidable technology companies in the world,” warning that Beijing could swiftly turn to Huawei if the U.S. keeps Nvidia on a tight leash.

China’s Growing Self-Reliance in AI Chips

Huawei was not alone. A wide array of Chinese chip developers — including Moore Threads and Yunsilicon — maintained booths at WAIC, joining tech titans like Alibaba and Tencent in showcasing AI hardware and applications ranging from translation apps and smart glasses to autonomous robots and learning aids.

At the event, education-focused NetEase’s Youdao introduced a handheld bar-shaped device that uses AI to help students prepare for university entrance exams. The device is powered by both cloud-based AI and on-device “edge AI,” highlighting how China’s chipmakers are ramping up to deliver power-efficient processors that support real-time applications.

Gao Huituan, product manager for the hardware, emphasized that many domestic chipmakers are now able to deliver “very excellent” edge processors, reducing reliance on foreign GPUs.

“Now everyone has relatively good computing power,” he said, noting a shift in the tech balance.

This expanding local capability feeds directly into Beijing’s broader goal of tech self-sufficiency. Over the weekend, Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced the launch of a global AI cooperation body with headquarters likely based in Shanghai — a strategic move aimed at asserting China’s AI standards internationally.

Nvidia’s Shrinking Chinese Footprint

Nvidia’s absence from WAIC comes despite the company’s continued attempts to navigate U.S. export restrictions. It recently received permission from Washington to resume sales of its downgraded H20 AI chips to China — chips that were specifically designed to meet U.S. export criteria while still serving Chinese demand.

While Nvidia had a booth earlier this month at a Beijing supply chain conference during Huang’s visit, it has yet to announce when H20 shipments to China will resume or how many orders it has received.

Morningstar analyst Phelix Lee noted that despite current limitations, Nvidia is still the “de facto standard” for AI data center systems globally, citing not just the H20, but flagship models like the upcoming GB300 GPU.

“The return of H20 could help Nvidia to remain as the model in (AI) GPU development in the short to medium term,” he said in a statement.

But with the WAIC snub and Huawei’s rapid momentum, the dynamics appear to be changing. Nvidia’s grip on the Chinese AI market — once seen as indispensable — is clearly under threat. The $50 billion China AI chip market, which Huang is eager to tap into, now finds itself at the center of a fast-intensifying chip war between Washington and Beijing.

Trump’s AI Action Plan

The geopolitical undercurrents deepened over the weekend with U.S. President Donald Trump announcing a national AI strategy, which includes proposals to combat what he calls “woke” bias in AI models and boost the international presence of American tech.

In response, China’s announcement of a global AI cooperation organization — potentially rivaling U.S.-led AI regulatory frameworks — shows how the race for dominance is shifting from hardware and chips to rule-setting and global governance.

With Huawei leading the charge and Nvidia’s access to the market uncertain, the world’s AI battlefield is no longer confined to lab breakthroughs — it’s increasingly being defined by geopolitical lines, export bans, and rival standards that could reshape how technology develops over the next decade.