Billionaire was born on the
10th of April year 1957. He is the founder of
Dangote Group. He is considered one of the richest men in Africa.
He said “I assume I have to be rated by Forbes magazine prior to being
called the richest man in Africa” But, you know, I’m very comfortable.
“He ranked first in
Nigeria in Forbes Magazine’s 2008 list of the richest people in the world with a fortune estimated at
3.3 billion dollars.
Aliko Dangote is the ‘golden child’ of Nigerian business circles. The
Dangote consortium spans across numerous sectors of the Nigerian
economyThe Dangote Group suppliescommodities like cements ,sugar, salt,
flour , rice, spaghetti, fabric etc at very competitive prices.
As a nonpartisan and detribalized businessperson, he is generous to
different political parties, religious groups and cultural institutions.
Apart from offering employment opportunities to elite graduates from
different ethnic backgrounds, he reduces the level of crime by engaging
youths who are school leavers in the area of transportation, product
packaging, security amidst others.
It may possibly not be a wild assumption to say that all Nigerian has
heard of his name due to the impact of his business. His goods are
practically in most homes across the country. People who may not use his
products might have passed a few of his trailers by the way.
He’s into exporting, importing, manufacturing, real-estate and
philanthropy. All of these are combined together to form what is known
as the Dangote Group.
At the helm of its affairs as president and Ceo is definitely an humble
person called Aliko Dangote. The focus of his investments is food,
clothing as well as shelter.
The Dangote Group imports 400,000 metric tonnes of sugar annually
which makes up about 70 % of the total requirements of the nation 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 tonnes of rice annually just as the company
imports tonnes of cement and fertilizer and building materials. Dangote
Group 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
globally.
His Beginning
Born in Kano, his grand father, the late Alhaji Sanusi Dantata
provided him with a small capital to start his own business, as was the
practice then. He thus started business in Kano in 1977 trading in
commodities and also building supplies.
Alhaji Aliko Dangote moved to Lagos in June 1977 and persisted in
trading cement and commodities. Encouraged by tremendous success and
increase in business activities, he incorporated two companies in 1981.
These as well as others that followed now make up the conglomerate known
as The Dangote Group.
Company Activities
Dangote Group today is associated with diverse types of manufacturing
with good revenues. Dangote textile 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 worldwide with an annual capacity of 700,000
tonnes of refined sugar annually. It also has another 100,000
tonne-capacity sugar mill at Hadeja in Jigawa State.
Besides having significant investment in the National Salt Company of
Nigeria at Ota, Ogun State, the group has salt factories at Apapa as
well as Calabar, a polypropylene bagging factory which produces
essential bags for its products, over 600 trailers for effective
distribution network and goods meant for export can also successfully be
transported to the respective ports.
A vehicle leasing unit with over 100 fully air-conditioned commuter
buses, is also part of the Dangote Group. It is also into real estate
with luxury flats and high rise complexes in Ikoyi, Victoria Island,
Abuja and Kano. Dangote Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the group
where yearly he spends millions 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 seems to be broad-minded. Unlike some people, his Personal Assistant
is Yoruba while his Head of Corporate Affairs is a Christian from Delta
State.
In this encounter, Dangote talks 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 and some industrialists have set up.
Perhaps above all, his patriotic stance is commendable: “If you give me
today $5 billion, I will not invest any abroad, I will invest everything
here in Nigeria. Let us put heads together and work.”
As a self-employed person, with minimum basic education, he proves
that business success is usually through strength of mind, honesty and
perseverance; and not necessarily by obtaining Harvard-Oxford
certificates or First-Class academic qualification. His managerial
skills surely are the envy of economic professors.
Instead of stashing his funds in foreign accounts, a typical feature
of fraudulent front and public office looters, Dangote invests wisely in
the productive sector of the Nigerian economy.To deny that Dangote
doesn’t have monopoly over a few of the commodities in the Nigerian
market is to deny the obvious.
Recently himself and other notable Nigerians announced their
intention to float a private sector mega company with the name
Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (TCN), which amongst other things
may acquire government-owned refinery, operate strategic state-owned
coys and pioneer status in Agriculture &
Information Technology.
I started small as a trader in cement - Aliko Dangote, richest black person in the world
The business mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, was at the Lagos Business
School to give a lecture. He ended up sharing his life experiences and
advice with both budding and established entrepreneurs. The event served
as a catalyst for today’s lessons from the man who has worked hard to
become the richest black person in the world, as written by OLORUNTIMILEHIN RAYMOND
It is an open secret that the Dangote Group, a diversified
conglomerate with interests across a range of sectors in Africa, has
over 18 subsidiary companies, with several interests in cement, sugar,
flour, salt, pasta, beverages and real estate, with new projects in
development in the oil and natural gas, telecommunications, fertilizer
and steel. But did you know that the Dangote Group started as a small
trading firm in the year 1977?
By identifying what you, as an
entrepreneur, should do, we tell the story of how the Chairman of
Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, got to where he is today.
See and maximise opportunities This is one of
the qualities that have made Dangote a successful business man in
Africa. He possesses a knack for seeing opportunities beyond what others
could see.
For instance, in April this year, he announced plans to invest $8
billion in building an oil refinery with capacity for around 400,000
barrels a day by late 2016. That is three years from now.
Of the amount, he revealed at the World Economic Forum on Africa held
in Cape Town, South Africa, that he had raised $4.5 to build the
refinery, securing loans from a consortium of banks.
Some have said
with that singular move, if all goes according to plan, Dangote stands a
great chance of becoming the richest man in the world.
PassionA lot of business moguls have said that
entrepreneurs need passion to pursue their vision in order to make it a
reality. And that passion has served as catalyst to becoming the man
Dangote is today. Being a person who had always had an eye for business
even at a young age, he passionately pursued his ideas vigorously,
becoming more than just an entrepreneur. “I can remember when I was in
primary school, I would go and buy cartons of sweets and I would start
selling them just to make money. I was so interested in business, even
at that time,” he said of how he started off.
Start smallWith a small token from his
grandfather and a latter loan he took from same, he started a business.
Now, he is the richest man in Africa, with net worth of $16.1 billion,
as of March 2013, in Forbes’ estimates.
Explaining, Dangote said “for me, I started small as a trader in
cement. Then I left cement around 1978. Because there was this armada
and cement was difficult to get at that time. I had my own money which
my grandfather gave me free, but then he gave me also an additional loan
of N500, 000 (about $3,000) which was big money in those days. The
money was quite a substantial amount then. The loan was supposed to be
paid back whenever I was okay-maybe after three or four years. But I
paid the loan back within six months.”
Don’t eat your seed moneyAt the time, Dangote
was given the N500, 000 loan in 1978, which he could have easily used to
chase cars, houses and whatever caught his fancy. Back then, a Mercedes
Benz car was sold for N5,000 while a Volkswagen Beetle went for N900 to
N1,000. But he didn’t do any of those, instead he invested the money
and he was able to pay back the loan in six months, as against the
originally thought three or four years.
Get an educationAside his formal education – a
degree in Business Studies and Administration from School of Economics
& Business, Al Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, he made himself
available to get as much informal education as possible, from his
grandfather, an uncle, the environment, the business climate and life in
general.
“All my business acumen and instincts I inherited from my maternal
grandfather. As his first grandson, he poured his business wizardry into
me. I would not have been where I am today without him; a very great
man, loving and caring.
“I started with the business of cement, which was giving us a lot of
money because at that time, Nigeria was making so much money and we were
doing a lot of constructions. On a vehicle which I normally get from my
uncle, I was making about N1,350 to N1,400 per day, and I had an
allocation of about three to four trucks including Saturdays and
Sundays. Later, I realised I was making a lot of money though then, I
didn’t have a lot of ideas of what to do. It was only cement business
that I knew and I was stuck to it up till 1980, when I started knowing
Lagos, becoming a Lagosian, understanding where to go and finding people
to buy import licenses from. Within three months, I paid my grandfather
back because I had no further need of his money,” the man was quoted to
have said in a biography.
Slow and steady wins the raceToday, the world
knows Dangote as a billionaire but did you know that he took him 30
years to amass $1 billion? His journey is a very interesting one,
showing all the features of luck, opportunity, hardwork and providence,
but most of all patience.
Invest in your environmentDangote believes that
taking your wealth outside the shores of the country wouldn’t help the
country’s economy, therefore, he charged entrepreneurs to invest in
their country, saying, “let me tell you this and I want to really
emphasise 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.”
Be accessible“I am someone who doesn’t switch
off my phone. My phone is on 24 hours. My day is not really very
structured because of several issues. The demand of my time is really
extremely high; especially in Nigeria you have a lot of ceremonies, and
unnecessary ones,” Dangote said at a lecture at the Lagos Business
School.
Don’t waste timeWhen attending business meetings
or conferences in other countries, he said he could not afford to waste
time. He explained that “sometimes I go all the way from here (Nigeria)
to China, and spend only five hours in China and come back. That’s why I
don’t take my private jet to China because the pilots need hours to
rest, and the hours that they need, which is nine hours, I don’t have.
So I have to take Emirates.”
Have a routine and invest in your healthDangote
said he starts his work days around 5 a.m., being the most productive
for him, in his own admission. He also said he tries to fit in time to
exercise most mornings, which helps him prevent stress. “Exercise is
better than any medicine I can take. Exercise and sleep,” he said during
the lecture. He is an ardent jogger.
Relax, let go of stress and worriesAt one time,
Dangote said he had trained himself not to let stress or worry affect
his sleep, recommending that other entrepreneurs train themselves in
this. “Even if someone had to tell me I would die tomorrow, I would
still sleep.
On how he relaxes, he said, “my only enjoyment is to sit around and
talk with my friends, and exercise. I like to exercise, and if people
are doing weddings or whatever I like to show up for 10-20 minutes and
then I go.”
