Alhaji Aliko Dangote, MFR, GCON (born 10 April
1957, Kano, Nigeria) is a business magnate in
Nigeria. who owns the Dangote Group, which
has interests in commodities. The company
operates in Nigeria and several other countries in
Africa, including Benin, Cameroon, Togo, Ghana,
South Africa and Zambia. As of March 2014, he
had an estimated net worth of $25 billion USD .
Dangote is ranked by Forbes Magazine as the
23rd richest person in the world and the richest
man in Africa. He surpassed Saudi-Ethiopian
billionaire Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi in 2013
by over $2.6 billion to become the world's
richest black man.
Early life
Alhaji Aliko Dangote, a northerner from Kano
State, Nigeria, was born on the 10th of April
1957 into a wealthy Muslim family. From the
time he was young Dangote had an eye on
business. He 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." He studied business
at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt and
thereafter returned to Nigeria to borrow from his
uncle Sanusi Abdulkadir Dantata, would
eventually provide him a loan of ₦500,000 (Naira,
NGN) when he was just 21 years old to start a
business.
Business career
The Dangote Group was established as a small
trading firm in 1977. Today, it is a multi-trillion
naira conglomerate with many of its operations
in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. At present,
Dangote has enlarged his line of businesses to
also cover food processing, cement
manufacturing, and freight. The Dangote Group
also dominates the sugar market in Nigeria and
is a major sugar 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 and these include: Dangote
Sugar Refinery, Dangote Cement, and Dangote
Flour, just to mention a few.
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