among the 50 most influential personalities in the world
by Bloomberg, a business and financial news media in the US.
The list consisted of CEOs, world leaders as well as
religious leaders.
According to Bloomberg, those who made the list are
businessmen & women who "build companies and assemble
fortunes. They run banks, or hope to disrupt them.
They shape economies and spread ideas. They manage
money and wield the clout that goes with the billions
of dollars they invest.” Read what was written about
Dangote below;
He’s feted like royalty. He has businesses ranging from
cement to sugar to energy in a dozen sub-Saharan countries.
He’s a fixture at elite gatherings such as the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. No African has
ridden the continent’s halting march out of poverty
toward potential prosperity as spectacularly as its
richest person, the Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote.
Dangote’s clout extends beyond the boardroom
and the high-flier dinner circuit. In March, as votes
were tallied in Nigeria’s presidential election,
Dangote, 58, served as an intermediary between the
camps of the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, and his
ultimately victorious rival, Muhammadu Buhari. “There’s
no question that he is quite an exceptional person—not
only in Africa but globally,” says Mark Mobius, chairman
of the emerging-markets group at Franklin
Templeton Investments.
Today, Dangote is seeking to export his business
empire and his influence beyond his terror-racked and
corruption-riddled home country. Nigeria is responsible
for about 85 percent of his fortune, which stood at
$13.9 billion as of Sept. 9, according to the Bloomberg
Billionaires Index. He’s planning new cement factories
across Africa and as far afield as Nepal and Brazil.
He’s considering taking Dangote Cement public on
the London Stock Exchange and has even floated
the idea of buying his beloved Arsenal, a top-ranking
soccer club in the English Premier League. “I’m
surprised I’m getting even four hours of sleep a day,”
Dangote says. “We’re going ahead full steam.” The
wealth Dangote has amassed is particularly conspicuous
in a country as poor as Nigeria, which the International
Monetary Fund ranked 122nd in the world in gross
domestic product per capita last year. “You really see
the inequalities,” then-president Jonathan said in May
last year at a World Economic Forum conclave in Abuja,
the Nigerian capital. Citing Dangote by name, Jonathan
said, “Income distribution is skewed toward a few
people.”
Dangote says his critics are being churlish.
“Instead of studying how Dangote succeeded, they’re
busy complaining,” he says. When he says that,
he’s speaking above the thrum of his private jet
as it makes its way back home to Lagos from Addis
Ababa after an hourlong meeting with Ethiopian Prime
Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. But compared with
the lifestyles of some tycoons, Dangote’s is understated.
Divorced from his wife, the mother of his three adult
daughters, he lives on Lagos’s Victoria Island. It’s one
of Africa’s most expensive neighborhoods, but the
home is far from lavish. Adjacent to a Mitsubishi
dealership, the house is sparsely decorated, with
a modest half-moon-shaped swimming pool set in a
small garden.
Dangote grew up in the city of Kano on the edge
of the Sahara, raised by his maternal grandfather,
a wealthy rice and commodities trader. In his early
20s, he left for Lagos in search of fat profits buying
and selling sugar, textiles, and cement in the
fast-growing city. Soon, he was earning enough
“to buy a Mercedes 200 every day,” he says.
These days, he’s fallen on what are for him hard
times. His net worth has tumbled by some $10 billion
in the past two years because of the crash in the price
of crude and unrest in Nigeria. Even so, he remains
characteristically upbeat. His setback? “An accident,”
he says. “I’m very confident that in the next two years,
you won’t even remember it.”.
cement to sugar to energy in a dozen sub-Saharan countries.
He’s a fixture at elite gatherings such as the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. No African has
ridden the continent’s halting march out of poverty
toward potential prosperity as spectacularly as its
richest person, the Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote.
Dangote’s clout extends beyond the boardroom
and the high-flier dinner circuit. In March, as votes
were tallied in Nigeria’s presidential election,
Dangote, 58, served as an intermediary between the
camps of the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, and his
ultimately victorious rival, Muhammadu Buhari. “There’s
no question that he is quite an exceptional person—not
only in Africa but globally,” says Mark Mobius, chairman
of the emerging-markets group at Franklin
Templeton Investments.
Today, Dangote is seeking to export his business
empire and his influence beyond his terror-racked and
corruption-riddled home country. Nigeria is responsible
for about 85 percent of his fortune, which stood at
$13.9 billion as of Sept. 9, according to the Bloomberg
Billionaires Index. He’s planning new cement factories
across Africa and as far afield as Nepal and Brazil.
He’s considering taking Dangote Cement public on
the London Stock Exchange and has even floated
the idea of buying his beloved Arsenal, a top-ranking
soccer club in the English Premier League. “I’m
surprised I’m getting even four hours of sleep a day,”
Dangote says. “We’re going ahead full steam.” The
wealth Dangote has amassed is particularly conspicuous
in a country as poor as Nigeria, which the International
Monetary Fund ranked 122nd in the world in gross
domestic product per capita last year. “You really see
the inequalities,” then-president Jonathan said in May
last year at a World Economic Forum conclave in Abuja,
the Nigerian capital. Citing Dangote by name, Jonathan
said, “Income distribution is skewed toward a few
people.”
Dangote says his critics are being churlish.
“Instead of studying how Dangote succeeded, they’re
busy complaining,” he says. When he says that,
he’s speaking above the thrum of his private jet
as it makes its way back home to Lagos from Addis
Ababa after an hourlong meeting with Ethiopian Prime
Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. But compared with
the lifestyles of some tycoons, Dangote’s is understated.
Divorced from his wife, the mother of his three adult
daughters, he lives on Lagos’s Victoria Island. It’s one
of Africa’s most expensive neighborhoods, but the
home is far from lavish. Adjacent to a Mitsubishi
dealership, the house is sparsely decorated, with
a modest half-moon-shaped swimming pool set in a
small garden.
Dangote grew up in the city of Kano on the edge
of the Sahara, raised by his maternal grandfather,
a wealthy rice and commodities trader. In his early
20s, he left for Lagos in search of fat profits buying
and selling sugar, textiles, and cement in the
fast-growing city. Soon, he was earning enough
“to buy a Mercedes 200 every day,” he says.
These days, he’s fallen on what are for him hard
times. His net worth has tumbled by some $10 billion
in the past two years because of the crash in the price
of crude and unrest in Nigeria. Even so, he remains
characteristically upbeat. His setback? “An accident,”
he says. “I’m very confident that in the next two years,
you won’t even remember it.”.
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