* Alhaji Aliko Dangote
The Pathfinder
Tuesday September 2, 2025
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Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has insisted that his multi-billion-dollar empire was built through personal effort and not inherited wealth.
Speaking in a recent interview, Dangote stressed that despite coming from an influential and wealthy background, he chose to chart his own course in business.
“I came from a wealthy family. My late great-grandfather in the 1940s was actually the richest, you know, West African. My late grandfather was one of the wealthiest Nigerians, you know,” Dangote revealed.
He added: “The family name is Dantata. That’s from my maternal side. My father, too, you know, was fairly rich, you know, but he was both, you know, in business and also in politics. But one thing that I’m very, very proud of is that I did not inherit any money from my father. I built everything from scratch to where I am.”
Dangote explained that whatever assets he inherited from his late father were later donated to charity.
Recounting his early days in commerce, he said: “I went to Lagos and started my own business by just, you know, buying cement, selling. You know, it was just a very low-key business.”
The billionaire industrialist noted that his interest in cement was motivated by Africa’s glaring infrastructure deficit.
“When you look at cement, cement is what builds infrastructure, and we need a lot of infrastructural deficits. In Nigeria alone, we have about 17,000 deficit of housing and it is all over in Africa. So when we started cement in Nigeria, we realised that the majority of it was actually imported, and that is why we went in there,” Dangote said.
Dangote’s empire, which now spans cement, sugar, fertiliser, and oil refining, has made him one of the most influential business figures on the continent.
FTN
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