Profile: Aliko Dangote
Nigerian business leader Aliko Dangote is the richest person in Africa.
Background
Aliko Dangote was born in 1957 in Kano, Northern Nigeria. He comes from a long line of successful business leaders, including his great-grandfather Alhaji Alhassan Dantata. At the end of his life in 1955, Dantata was the wealthiest man in West Africa.
Dangote’s lived with his grandfather, Sanusi Dantata, and picked up an interest in the business world from his successful guardian as a child.
Dangote attended Al-Azar University in Cairo, receiving a bachelor’s degree in business studies and administration in 1977. His first business venture, started with a loan from an uncle, was an immediate success and marked the beginning of Dangote’s entrepreneurial achievements.
Aliko Dangote’s Net Worth
Aliko Dangote has a current estimated net worth of $11.3 billion. His business interest in the early days was selling agricultural commodities and he rapidly expanded to include numerous other sectors.
The Dangote Group, founded in 1977 at the time of that very first venture, has gone from a small trading firm to a large conglomerate with diverse interests ranging from cement manufacturing to sesame seed exporting. It is the largest industrial group in Nigeria.
The seeds of Dangote’s fortune were commodities. In 1997 he began to produce and manufacture some of the products he had been importing and reaped the rewards of eliminating the middleman.
It was during this same period that Dangote acquired the state-owned cement company that would go on to form the core industry of his conglomerate.
As he added diversity and expanded production those early seeds bore ever more profitable fruit. Dangote has always operated on the principle that the majority of his business profits should be reinvested in his companies.
Current Business Ventures
Dangote Cement is currently the main source of revenue for the group, and Aliko Dangote owns 85% of that venture. Operating in 10 countries, Dangote Cement is the largest cement producer in Africa, producing 45.6 million metric tons of cement each year.
Dangote also owns a sugar refinery, the third-largest in the world, producing 800,000 tons of sugar per year and dominating the Nigerian market. His manufacturing companies are all publicly traded and include National Salt Company of Nigeria PLC and Dangote Flour Mills PLC in addition to the cement and sugar refining operations.
The Dangote Group is currently expanding with the Dangote Refinery, under construction and set to be one of the largest refineries in the world. In addition to the substantial increase in company profits should the venture prove successful, the refinery would also reduce Nigeria’s dependence on foreign oil.
Dangote has current ventures in dozens of industries, always using the capital from his core industries to diversify, expand, and invest in Nigeria.
More recent business initiatives include forays into telecommunications, including an ambitious plan to build 14,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable in Nigeria, enough to supply the entire country.
The Dangote Group is still active in importing goods such as pasta, fish, and rice, and exporting cotton, cocoa, sesame seeds, and ginger.
In addition to Dangote’s commodities and manufacturing endeavors, the group also has substantial investments in other areas including real estate, transport, textiles, and banking.
Aliko Dangote benefited from the success and business acumen of his family while building his fortune. Accessing capital and connections in the business world going back generations, he expanded his initial commodities trading venture into the largest industrial group in Nigeria.
He has been the richest man in Africa since 2011 and the continued expansion of his business empire indicates that Dangote intends on maintaining that status.
