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The Rich List- Africa’s wealthiest man Aliko Dangote

Pile of dollars

Warren Buffet is one of America's richest men

According to Forbes, Aliko Dangote is Africa's richest man.

He is the CEO of Dangote Group - Africa's largest cement producer with a net worth of $14 billion.

He was born in Kano, Nigeria, in 1957.

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His great-grandfather became one of the richest men in West Africa by trading kola and groundnuts.

Dangote's father passed away when he was eight, so he was raised by his maternal grandfather.

He graduated from Egypt's Al-Azhar University with a degree in business, after this he returned to Nigeria where he started his own cement trading business funded by a loan from his uncle.

He then moved from Kano to Lagos and ramped up imports.

By 1981, he had formed the corporation that is now known as Dangote Group.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Dangote wanted his operation to include trading sugar, flour, fish, rice, milk, and iron.

He left in 1996 to go to Brazil to study manufacturing which gave him the opportunity to shift the company's focus from trading to manufacturing.

This created a local operation that would profit from meeting the basic consumer needs of Nigeria's growing population.

He started building salt and sugar refineries, flour mills, and even a pasta factory in 1999.

Then one year later, he bought the Benue Cement Co. from the Nigerian government.

He later commissioned the Obajana Cement Plant, which is the largest cement facility in sub-Saharan Africa.

Today, Dangote Group's main publicly traded businesses make up about one-third of the market capitalization of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Dangote Cement has the capability to make 48.6 million metric tons each year and has operations in 10 different countries across Africa.

After some years of development, Dangote's fertilizer plant in Nigeria began operations in mid-2021.

Dangote Refinery has been under construction since 2016 and once it is complete it is expected to be one of the world's largest oil refineries.

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