n 2008, the names of Alhaji Aliko Dangote and a few other Nigerians appeared on the FORBES billionaires’ list. Dangote’s fortune was pegged at $3.3 billion. When the rankings were made a year later, his fortune dropped to $2.5 billion and plunged further to $2.1 billion the year after. By 2011, after he had taken Dangote Cement public, his fortune surged 557 per cent to $13.8 billion.
In 2012, he dropped to $11.2 billion, but rebounded at $20.1 billion this year. Since March, his fortune has jumped another 30 per cent. He is now the richest man in Africa and the 25th richest in the world. Dangote, whose cement manufacturing concern is on its way to becoming the largest in the world, has announced his plans to go into petroleum refining. He may well be on his way to becoming the No. 1 moneybags in the world. Or, what is he up to? HASSAN GIMBA AHMED writes:
His beginning
Aliko Dangote was born in Kano, Nigeria, on April 10, 1957. Born into a rich Muslim family, he had an eye on cutting his teeth in his own corner. While in primary school, he discovered the incurable desire for sweets by the other children and began selling cartons of sweets, just to make money. He would buy from huge shops and sell to the children in his school. He had no use for the money, yet he stockpiled it. “I was selling the sweets just to make money, because I was so interested in business even at that time,” he recalled.
After finishing his secondary education, the young Dangote was shipped off to Cairo’s Al Azhar University where he bagged a degree in business methods. With some knowledge of the world added to his natural business savvy, Dangote returned to Nigeria to work with his maternal uncle Sanusi Abdulkadir Dantata. When he turned 21, Dangote was good to start and on his own. His uncle, who had become somewhat of a business tutor, loaned him N500, 000 with his blessings.
Dangote began trading in commodities like cement, flour, sugar, rice, fish and later pasta and its byproducts.
By the early part of the 21st century, he had delved into full production of these items. He also added freight and food processing; he went ahead to build the Dangote Group, West Africa’s largest publicly-listed conglomerate. His interest covers sugar refineries, salt processing facilities and Dangote Cement, the continent’s largest cement producer. Dangote Group brokered deals which made his group the major sugar supplier to the country’s soft drink companies, breweries, and confectioners.
Today, the Group exports cotton, cashew nuts, cocoa, sesame seeds and ginger to several countries. It also has major investments in real estate, banking, transport, textiles and oil and gas. The Dangote Group employs over 11,000 people, a figure expected to double in the next three years. It has become the largest industrial conglomerate in the whole of West Africa. In January 2009, he was honoured as the leading employer of labour in the Nigerian private sector.
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