Aliko Dangote was born on the 10th of April 1957 into a wealthy Muslim family in Kano state. From infancy, he showed keen interest in trading. The young Aliko, while in primary school, would buy cartons of sweets and start selling them just to make money. He later studied business at the Al Azhar University, Cairo, in Egypt, and thereafter returned to Nigeria to work with his uncle, Sanusi Abdulkadir Dantata. His uncle eventually provided him a loan of ₦ 500,000 when he was just 21 years old to start his own business.
Today, Dangote is known as the richest man in Africa, having all his fingers in virtually all areas of business. In November, 2011, Dangote was awarded a National Honour, Nigeria’s second highest honour, Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) by President Goodluck Jonathan.
Aliko Dangote is ranked first in Nigeria on the Forbes 2008 List of the richest people in the world with a fortune estimated at 3.3 billion dollars. Dangote was named as the Forbes Africa Person of the Year 2014. With an estimated current net worth of about $13.8 billion, he is still ranked by Forbes as the richest person in Nigeria. He is also simultaneously ranked as the richest person of African descent in the world, surpassing Mohammed Al Amoudi and Oprah Winfrey of the US.
Aliko Dangote is the great mogul of Nigerian business circles. The Dangote consortium spans across many sectors of the Nigerian economy. It provides cement, sugar, salt, flour, rice, spaghetti, textile, and many other commodities to millions of Nigerians at competitive prices.
As a nonpartisan and detribalized businessperson, he is generous to different political parties, religious groups and cultural institutions. Apart from providing employment to elite graduates from different ethnic backgrounds, he minimizes the level of crime by engaging youths who are school leavers in various careers, such as transportation, packaging, construction, oil and gas and security services.
It can be said that every adult Nigerian has heard about Aliko Dangote because of the impact of his business. His products can be found in most homes across the country. Those who do not consume the products of his companies would have seen some of his trailers on the highways. He is into export, import, manufacturing, real estate and philanthropy. All these are rolled together into what is known as the Dangote Group, which was formally incepted in 1977.
The Dangote Group imports 400,000 metric tons of sugar annually which accounts for about 70 per cent of the total requirements of the country and is a major supplier of the product to the manufacturers of Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola and Seven-Up in Nigeria. It imports 200,000 metric tons of rice annually just as the company imports tons of cement and fertilizer and building materials. It also imports fish and owns three big fishing trawlers chartered for fishing with a 5,000 MT capacity.
The group exports cotton, cocoa, cashew nuts, sesame seed, ginger and gum Arabic to several countries.
Early Beginning
Alhaji Aliko Dangote moved to Lagos in June 1977 and continued trading in cement and commodities. Encouraged by tremendous success and increase in business activities, he incorporated two companies in 1981, which formed the nucleus of the huge conglomerate known as Dangote Group.
The group today is involved in diverse forms of manufacturing with high turnover. Dangote textiles and the Nigeria Textiles Mills Plc, which it acquired, produce over 120,000 meters of finished textiles daily. The group has a ginnery in Kankawa, Katsina State with a capacity of 30,000 MT of seeded cotton annually. The sugar refinery at Apapa port, Lagos is the largest in Africa and in size the third largest in the world with an annual capacity of 700,000 tons of refined sugar annually. It also has another 100,000 ton-capacity sugar mill at Hadeija in Jigawa State.
Apart from having substantial investment in the National Salt Company of Nigeria at Ota, Ogun State, the group has salt factories at Apapa and Calabar, a polypropylene bagging factory which produces required bags for its products, over 600 trailers for efficient distribution network and goods meant for export can also efficiently be transported to the ports.
Dangote likes to talk about his driving force in business, the factors that have kept him above his contemporaries in business, his $800 million cement factory at Obajana, Kogi State and the N14 million mega company, which he set up in partnership with other industrialists. Perhaps above all, his patriotic stance is commendable. He tells anyone willing to listen: “If you give me $5 billion today, I will not invest any of it abroad I will invest everything here in Nigeria. Let us put heads together and make our country work.”
As a self-employed person, Dangote has been able to prove that business success can be through determination, honesty and perseverance; and not necessarily by acquiring Harvard and Oxford certificates or other first class academic qualifications. His managerial skill must surely be the envy of professors of Economics. Instead of stashing his funds in foreign accounts, a common feature of fraudulent front and public office looters, Dangote invests wisely in the productive sector of the Nigerian economy.
The Dangote Group is a diversified conglomerate, headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, with interests across a range of sectors in Africa. Current interests include cement, sugar, flour, salt, pasta, beverages and real estate, with new projects in development in the oil and Natural gas, telecommunications, fertilizer and steel. The Group focuses on provision of local, value-added products and services that meet the needs of the African population. Dangote Cement, the largest cement production company in Africa, with a market capitalization of almost $14 billion on the Nigeria Stock Exchange, has subsidiaries in Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa and Zambia. In December 2010, the group signed an agreement with the Government of Zambia to construct a $400 million cement plant there – with expected annual output of 1.5 million metric tons of cement.
Dangote Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the group where he spends millions of naira yearly for worthy causes such as contributions to educational and healthcare institutions, sinking of boreholes and giving of scholarships. The Dangote Group has nationwide staff strength of 12,000 but on completion of on-going projects, it is expected to hit 22,000. Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s business success may be influenced by various factors. He is so broad-minded. Unlike some people in his cadre, his Personal Assistant is Yoruba while his Head of Corporate Affairs is a Christian from Delta State.
