How Aliko Dangote Became The Richest Person In Africa

#Entrepreneur

In yesterday’s post, I shared a story of a successful Nigerian's Entrepreneur, Adenike Ogumlesi, who is the founder, CEO, and manufacturer of the Nigerian babies and kiddies clothing line called Ruff ‘n’ Tumble . Adenike  started up her business just little as any other person and  she ended up being super-rich.

Today, I’m going to share with you yet another story of an Entrepreneur that also started small but ends up becoming the richest man in Nigeria. His business brand becomes a household name both in Nigeria and Africa.

A few billionaires roam the earth. What gets even more exciting is whenever the world hears of African billionaires. With majority of the world’s view about Africa being portrayed as a continent majorly filled with small huts, farmers, and every man getting married to multiple women at childhood, many wonder how billionaires are ever forged on the continent. While the world’s perception about Africa is mostly wrong, the continent is disproving these misguided thoughts by even further producing more dollar billionaires every year.

How then are billionaires formed in a continent where the rest of the world’s view about it is a land mass with hunters, huts, and people struggling to survive? The simple answer: “Anyone who hasn’t been to Africa, knows nothing about Africa”.

This article talks about an interesting fellow that has managed to disturb the thoughts of many who can’t comprehend how wealth creation even happens on the continent, talk-less of self-made billionaires. He’s not just a dollar billionaire, he’s the richest person in Africa, and according to Forbes billionaire list for the year 2016, he’s richer than Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, and Roman Abramovich combined. His name is Aliko Dangote.

Who’s This Aliko Dangote Anyway?

Aliko Dangote is Forbes 2016 richest person in Africa. He’s stipulated to also be the richest black person in the world. He has held this position for over 4 years and counting, and seems to be unstoppable.

 So How Did He Start Out?

 

Image Source: ontvsite.com

Aliko Dangote was born in 1957 to a business oriented household in Kano State, Nigeria. Unlike many other self-made billionaires, Aliko Dangote was born with a silver spoon. His grandfather, Sanusi Dantata, was one of the wealthiest men in West Africa at the time. He made a bulk of his fortune from groundnuts, oats, and rice.

Following the death of his father, Dangote’s grandfather took him in and became is de facto guardian. Living with his grandfather exposed him to the different rudiments of entrepreneurship. He learnt a lot about marketing, procuring goods, establishing customer relationships, and more. This even prompted him to start selling boxes of sweets (candy bars) in primary school to his classmates as one of his first trial at entrepreneurship.

 How Did Aliko Dangote Build His Business Empire?

After his graduation from Al-Azhar University in Egypt, in 1977, Aliko Dangote at age 21, got a loan of 500,000 Naira ($2,500) from his grandfather to start a trade in commodities, to be repaid within three years. At that time, 500,000 Naira could buy one hundred Mercedes Benz in Nigeria.

He took this loan, and went over to Lagos, in Nigeria, with an uncle of his. With the business loan he had secured, he started importing rice and sugar from Thailand (rice) and Brazil (sugar) respectively.

As he sold these commodities to the locals, his business quickly exploded with extremely high revenues, sometimes reaching net profits of over $10,000 daily, and he returned his grandfather’s loan in 3 months, instead of the agreed 3 years.

Progressive Growth

As his conglomerate grew, Aliko Dangote realized that if he was ever to reach a true billionaire status, he’d have to start manufacturing and stop importing commodities. He’d have to fully control the final price, so he could compete effectively, and also comfortably push out competitors in his industries.

As he took steps towards manufacturing in 1997, he began to produce sugar, flour, and pasta. He was later awarded a cement plant by the federal government, and later built a multi-million dollar cement manufacturing plant in 2005 with $319 million dollars of his own money, and a $479 million dollar loan from the World Bank International Finance Corporation.

How The Empire Was Eventually Established

 

Image Source: afrobiznews.blogspot.com

Following the success of all his multiple investments, Aliko Dangote quoted many of his companies in the stock Exchange.

Before this, he stated that his company, The Dangote Group, always reinvested everything it made, back into the business, than storing up money in the bank like many other companies do.

He’s currently building a $9 billion dollar oil and gas refinery in Nigeria, stipulated to be completed in 2017/2018, and is also building a multi-million dollar fertilizer processing facility.

Today, The Dangote Group is the largest conglomerate in West Africa. You can find a list of all The Dangote Group’s investments in this Wikipedia article here.

To Sum It Up

Aliko Dangote’s success story is not that of a man who started from a poor or comfortable home and eventually achieved great wealth. His story is that of a child every wealthy parent dreams of. The child, who doesn’t needs to inherit his or her family’s properties, but the one, who can turn a little sum into a multi-billion dollar empire.

While his story may not be a rag to riches type, his success story is definitely an inspiration to anyone that has some startup capital, and hopes to someday be one of the richest people in the world.

Also read: The Richest People In Nigeria  

Source: StartupTipsDaily