Sixty hearty cheers to the modern day industrialist, quintessential gentleman, and Africa’s wealthiest man as he strikes another one; this time his latest milestone is reaching the desired age of diamond for men of great achievements.
Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chairman of Dangote Group, was born on April 10, 1957.
Aliko Dangote was born in Kano State into a rich family of Islamic background to mother Mariya Sanusi Dantata and Mohammed Dangote. From a young age, Aliko Dangote has always committed to doing business, selling packs of sweets in his secondary school days. He has a degree in Business from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.
He established the Dangote Group as a mini trading business in 1977 with a N500,000 loan that he got from his wealthy uncle, Sanusi Abdulkadir Dantata when he was just 21 years of age, after he returned from studying in Egypt.
Though Dangote made his billions from trading in cement, flour, and sugar, he has recently added oil trading into his business interests. In April 2014, he announced a plan to invest $9 billion in building a private oil refinery and a petrochemical plant.
The Dangote Group is a leading manufacturer of everyday consumables such as sugar, which is the largest in Africa and the third in sugar refining globally, producing about 800,000 tonnes annually. The Dangote Group operates in several African countries such as Togo, Cameroon, Benin Republic, Ghana, Zambia, and South Africa, with the headquarters in Nigeria.
The Dangote Group is a major employer of labour in Nigeria and West Africa, with a total workforce of about 11,000 people.
As a recognition of his achievements and economic contributions, Alhaji Dangote was honoured on November 14, 2011 by the Nigerian Government with the award of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON), the second highest honour in Nigeria, which was presented by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
The 2014 Forbes ranking of the richest people in the world estimate the wealth of Dangote to be about $24.6 billion, making him Africa’s richest person and one of the top 50 richest people in the world.
The billionaire businessman is Africa’s richest man with a 90 percent stake in the publicly-traded Dangote Cement, a company that produces about 44 million metric tones annually with plans to increase output by 33 percent by the year 2020.
Dangote also owns substantial stake in the manufacturing of salt, sugar, and flour – all publicly quoted companies.
Dangote is married with children, Zainab Dangote, Halima Dangote, Fatima Dangote, Salma Dangote.