MMC Nation examines the life and times of Africa’s “wealthiest” man, Aliko Dangote, detailing his remarkable life, journey and business exploits in the most populous black nation on earth.
Who is Aliko Dangote ?
Alhaji Aliko Dangote is the richest Black Man and the 35th richest Person in the world, a Nigerian by nationality, his wealth is currently estimated at over $51.5 billion by Forbes.
Aged 69, this entrepreneur is what Nigerians refer to as a Nepo baby, but make no mistake, nothing was bequeathed to him, he had to think, plan, act and work tirelessly to build his empire – Dangote Group and more recently, Dangote Petroleum Refinery – the largest single train refinery in the world, his most recent investment which contributed to the surge of his wealth from $30.4 billion in January 2026 to the current $51.5 billion valuation this September, largely due to the valuation of the large Ibeju-Lekki refinery, its private placement which raised $2.5 billion dollars and its ongoing public IPO which is expected to raise N2.15 trillion.
Early Life
Presido (coined from his corporate title – President of Dangote Group) was born in Kano on the 10th of April 1957.
The Aries billionaire was born into a prominent business lineage of Hausa descent – Dangote on his father’s side and Dantata on his mother’s side. It was his maternal grandfather, Sanusi Dantata that gave him the name Aliko, meaning: “the victorious one who defends humanity”.
Aliko’s maternal great-grandfather, Alhassan Abdullahi Dantata, was the richest person in West Africa until his death in 1955, a legacy that Aliko has carried on, beyond Africa, to the world, having grown to become the World’s Richest Black Man.
Presido’s father died when he was only 8, leaving him and his other three siblings under the care of his mother, his maternal grandfather, Sanusi, and his maternal uncle, Usman Amaka Dantata, who played significant roles in his upbringing. Although he received inheritance from his father, it was reported that his inheritance was donated to charity – a mark of a man who despite coming from affluence, strived to carve his own niche and build his own legacy.
Education
Aliko attended a Madrasa (Arabic school), gaining Islamic education before completing his secondary education in a public school. Afterwards, he proceeded to Egypt where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in business studies and administration at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.
After his education, he returned to Lagos, Nigeria to pursue his business goals.
Marital Life
In 1977, at the young age of twenty, Aliko’s family chose a wife from him in line with tradition and local customs, this led to his first marriage with Zainab. The marriage was fruitful, producing two children, Maria and Halima, however, the couple later separated.
Later in life, Aliko entered into a second marriage with Mariya Muhammad Rufai and the union was blessed with a child named Fatima. However, the marriage ended in divorce in 2017.
In total, Presido has four children, his three daughters from his previous marriages and an adopted son, AbdulRahman.
Business Career
According to Dangote in several interviews, his venture into business began when he was eight-years-old in primary school. During that period, he used his pocket money to buy boxes of candy and had others sell them for a profit, an early indication of his entrepreneurship spirit.
Later on, during his teenage years, he ventured into the transport and lorries business. After working in an uncle’s transport business, his grandfather provided him with three lorries at age 19 to start his own transport venture in Kano.
However, his corporate dealings only began in 1970s when he moved to Lagos and began trading bagged cement using a loan from his uncle, Alhaji Sanusi Dantata.
During this period and the decade that followed, he diversified his interests and expanded into importing and distributing essential consumer commodities like rice, sugar, salt, and fisheries, which laid the foundation for the Dangote Group.
In 1981, his company further expanded its business operations to include textiles, flour, oil and gas and real estate.
Industrialisation and Domestic Production
During the aforementioned period of 1970 – 80s, particularly in 1977, Dangote’s company began the indigenous production of pasta, salt, sugar, and flour, moving away from importation of foreign commodities. His sugar refinery in particular, grew to become the second largest in the world.
This marked a significant shift in his company’s corporate direction from importing to manufacturing, and this shift in trade policy laid the foundation for his next venture which led him to his most notable line of business prior to the take off of the Dangote Refinery.
In 1998, just before the advent of Nigeria’s 4th republic, Dangote delved into the cement business and as he scaled up his operations, a new civilian government came into power after decades of military rule.
Following his election, the newly elected civilian government of President Olusegun Obasanjo had begun to set his political agenda and Dangote saw this as a unique opportunity to advance his business interests, particularly the cement business.
He began to build rapport with the administration and leveraged his relationship with the President to advance and support an indigenous policy that suspended importation, and promoted the domestic production, of cement.
During the administration of Obasanjo, the Nigerian government privatised Benue Cement Company (BCC), a now defunct state-owned company in Gboko, Benue state, allowing Dangote to expand his cement business in Benue. Dangote also developed his Obajana cement plant in Kogi State, which became the largest cement plant in Sub-Saharan African.
For decades, the Dangote Cement was a major contributor to his fortune, however, Presido had other plans underway for his Dangote Group Conglomerate. He had the intention of scaling up his investment in the oil and gas sector, however, he did not want to be plagued by the corrupt subsidy regime that was in place at the time. Presido’s vision was crystal clear and again, he decided that it was better to refine rather than import, preferring to build wealth on Africa soil. As a result, he put measures in place as he carefully strategised and outlined the modalities required for the actualisation of his refinery.
During the administration of Babatunde Raji Fashola, former governor of Lagos state, Dangote engaged the government, negotiated and acquired a large expanse of land measuring over 2600 hectares in the Ibeju-Lekki axis of the state. At the time, the land cost Dangote $100 million.
For a land that was acquired between 2013 and 2014, the building of the multi-billion-dollar refinery did not commence until 2016 when the construction was flagged off. That year, Dangote’s net worth fluctuated between $10.4 billion and $15.4 billion.
Finally, after multi-year delays from logistics and the CO-VID19 pandemic, the construction of the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery was actualised and officially commissioned by former President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2023.
The refinery officially began commercial operations in January 2024, following the delivery of initial crude oil cargoes and the start of processing diesel and aviation fuel. However, production of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly known as petrol formally began in September 2024 while full Scale production and distribution began from 2025, with the plant ramping up its distribution capacity, integrating deeply into Nigeria’s domestic fuel supply chain and scaling its output toward its nameplate capacity.
As at 2024, Dangote’s estimated net worth was $13.4 billion and by the the end of 2025, it had risen to $30 billion (approx.) and as earlier stated, the refinery operations contributed to a surge of over $20 billion in his net worth leading to his current net worth of $51.5 billion.
Conclusion
In one of Dangote’s recent interviews following the announcement and flag off of the refinery’s IPO, he made it clear that he would prefer to be referred to as the wealthiest man in Africa, rather than richest, to reflect his contribution to the creation of shared value and economic ownership for others in Africa.
Nothing is more apt than the above remark, while Africa was rich in mineral resources and human capacity, it remained poor in output and productivity because the world harnessed its resources and exported it back to Africa in finished form.
However, Dangote endeavoured to become a pioneer of the industrialisation and revolutionisation of domestic production, starting from Sugar to Cement and now Petroleum resources, harnessing Africa’s resources and exporting to the world as finished product, making the continent a mass producer in its own right. The man, the enigma and the legend, succeeded where several African governments had hitherto failed.
His industrialist actions have contributed to Nigeria’s recent positive economic outlook which has seen the country experience trade surplus in recent years as we move from consumption to production.
What a remarkable turnaround, and lesson for every young African entrepreneur and dreamer that with relentless effort, focus, discipline and tenacity, our dreams, goals and aspirations can be accomplished.
In the words of Burna Boy: “Dangote, Dangote, Dangote, still dey find money.. I no dey, I no dey, I no dey sleep until I see money.. who I be wey I no go find money?” #Foodforthought