Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the wealthiest black person in the world, was born in Kano, Nigeria. After graduating in business studies from Al-Azahar University, Dangote started business in 1977 trading in rice, sugar, and cement. With success, he incorporated two businesses in 1981.
As President and Chief Executive Officer, he has grown the Dangote Group to include 13 subsidiaries, doing business in 14 African countries, with over 12,000 employees. The subsidiary businesses include food processing, cement manufacturing, and freight. As of February 2017 his net worth placed at $12.5 billion 2012.
Dangote hails from a very prominent business family that lived in Nigeria for many years. He is the great grand son of Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, the richest African at the time of his death in 1955. Aliko Dangote, an ethnic Hausa Muslim from Kano State, was born on 10 April 1957 into a wealthy Muslim family. Dangote said, “I can remember when I was in primary school, I would go and buy cartons of sweets [sugar boxes]and I would start selling them just to make money. I was so interested in business, even at that time.”
The Dangote Group was established as a small trading firm in 1977, the same year Dangote relocated to Lagos to expand the company. Today, it is a multi-trillion naira conglomerate with many of its operations in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. Dangote has expanded to cover food processing, cement manufacturing, and freight.
The Dangote Group also dominates the sugar market in Nigeria and is a major supplier to the country’s soft drink companies, breweries, and confectioners. The Dangote Group has moved from being a trading company to being the largest industrial group in Nigeria including Dangote Sugar Refinery, Dangote Cement, and Dangote Flour.
In July 2012, Dangote approached the Nigerian Ports Authorities to lease an abandoned piece of land at the Apapa Port, which was approved. He later built facilities for his flour company there. In the 1990s, he approached the Central Bank of Nigeria with the idea that it would be cheaper for the bank to allow his transport company to manage their fleet of staff buses, a proposal which was also approved.
In Nigeria today, Dangote Group with its dominance in the sugar market and refinery business is the main supplier (70% of the market) to the country’s soft drinks companies, breweries and confectioners.[citation needed]It is the largest refinery in Africa and the third largest in the world, producing 800,000 tonnes of sugar annually. Dangote Group owns salt factories and flour mills and is a major importer of rice, fish, pasta, cement and fertiliser.
The company exports cotton, cashew nuts, cocoa, sesame seed and ginger to several countries. It also has major investments in real estate, banking, transport, textiles and oil and gas. The company employs over 11,000 people and is the largest industrial conglomerate in West Africa.
Dangote has diversified into telecommunications and has started building 14,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables to supply the whole of Nigeria.
As a result, Dangote was honoured in January 2009 as the leading provider of employment in the Nigerian construction industry.
He said, “Let me tell you this and I want to really emphasize it…nothing is going to help Nigeria like Nigerians bringing back their money. If you give me $5 billion today, I will invest everything here in Nigeria. Let us put our heads together and work.”
