Dangote joins World’s Richest 100 People

For two decades on the bounce, billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote has unarguably been the single biggest player in the Nigerian economy. But he raised the game in the outgoing decade with his $12 billion refinery project in Lekki, Lagos. The refinery complex, which will house the largest single train refinery in the world, is sitting on 2,600 hectares which also includes a fertilizer and petrochemicals plant, and a pipeline system running 550km from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Recent reports have it that Dangote, Africa’s richest man, became $4.3 billion richer in the year 2019 alone as his fortune continued to grow on the back of investments in cement, flour and sugar. The 62-year-old Africa’s most prominent industrialist ended the decade with a net worth of almost $15 billion, making him the 96th wealthiest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The business empire Dangote began to build more than three decades ago is one of the largest private-sector employers in Nigeria as well as the most valuable conglomerate in West Africa. His business interests encompass many industries, including oil and gas, consumer goods and manufacturing. About 80 per cent of his conglomerate’s revenue comes from Dangote Cement.

According to Forbes, the subsidiary produces 44 million metric tons of cement every year and plans to increase output by 33 per cent by 2020. Dangote also owns the world’s third-largest sugar refinery, and together all of his publicly traded companies make up a quarter of the market capitalization of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Born into a wealthy Muslim family of traders in the north, Dangote incorporated his own business selling cement at 21. He shifted to manufacturing the building material in the 1990s, helped by government policies that encouraged ways to reduce the need for imports.