Aliko Dangote MFR, GCON

  

Alhaji Aliko Dangote, a northerner, precisely from Kano State, Nigeria was born on the 10th of April 1957 into a wealthy Muslim family. Dangote, right from when he was young 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 from the Al Azhar University, Cairo in Egypt and thereafter returned to Nigeria to work with his uncle Sanusi Abdulkadir Dantata. His uncle would eventually provide him a loan of ₦ 500,000 (Naira, NGN) when he was just 21 years old to start a business.
The Dangote Group which started as a small trading firm was established in the year 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 also 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 but a few.
In the month of July 2012, he approached the Nigerian Ports Authority with the idea of leasing an abandoned piece of land at the Apapa Port, which was welcomed and approved. He later went to build facilities for his flour company there. So also in the 90's, 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 which was also approved.
In Nigeria as of today, Dangote Group with its dominance in the sugar market and Sugar Refinery is the main supplier (70% of the market) to the country's soft drinks companies, breweries and confectioners. It is indeed, the largest refinery in Africa and the third largest in the world producing 800,000 tones of sugar annually. Apart from these, Dangote Group owns salt factories and flour mills and also being a major importer of rice, fish, pasta, cement and fertilizer. 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 the whole of West Africa.
Dangote is also exploring into telecommunications and has started building 14,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables to supply the whole of Nigeria and as a result, he was honored 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."
As far as politics is concerned in Nigeria, Dangote played a very prominent role in the funding of Obasanjo’s re-election bid in 2003, to which he gave over N200 million (US$2M). He also contributed N50 million (US$0.5M) to the National Mosque under the aegis of "Friends of Obasanjo and Atiku". Further more, he also contributed N200 million to the Presidential Library. These highly controversial gifts to the members of the ruling Party[PDP] have generated a lot of concerns despite highly publicized anti-corruption drives during Obasanjo's second term.
On the 23rd of May 2010, Britain's Daily Mirror published it that, Dangote was interested in buying a 16 percent stake in Premiership side Arsenal belonging to Lady Nina Brace well-Smith.[7] Dangote later denied these rumours.[8]
On the 14th of November, 2011, Dangote was awarded a National Honour, the Nigeria's second highest honour, Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) by the President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan.[9]
The Dangote Group is a diversified conglomerate, headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, with interests across a range of sectors in Africa. Current interests include cement, sugar, flour, salt, pasta, beverages and real estate, with new projects in development in the oil and Natural gas, telecommunications, fertilizer[2] and steel. The Group focuses on provision of local, value-added products and services that meet the needs of the African population. Dangote Cement, the largest cement production company in Africa, with a market capitalization of almost US$14 billion on the Nigeria Stock Exchange, has subsidiaries in Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia.[3] In December 2010, the group signed an agreement with the Government of Zambia to construct a US$400 million cement plant in Zambia. Once completed in June 2013, as anticipated, the new plant is expected to have an annual output of 1.5 million metric tonnes of cement.