Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote has said that he did not inherit money from his late father but built his fortune independently.
In a recent interview, the billionaire businessman explained that although his family was wealthy on both his maternal and paternal sides, he made a personal decision to chart his own path.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
The 68-year-old added that the property he received from his father was later given to charity.
On how he started, he said he initially worked with his uncle before moving to Lagos to begin cement trading.
“I went to Lagos and started my own business by just buying cement, selling. You know, it was just a very low-key business,” he recalled.
According to him, his choice to venture into cement production was influenced by Africa’s infrastructure needs.
“When you look at cement, cement is what builds infrastructure, and we have a lot of infrastructural deficits. In Nigeria alone, we have about 17,000 deficit of housing and it is all over 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,” he said.
Aliko Dangote is the founder and chairman of Dangote Group, a conglomerate with interests in cement, sugar, salt, fertiliser, oil and gas, among others.
The group’s cement arm, Dangote Cement, is Africa’s largest cement producer.
Dangote has been listed for several years as Africa’s richest person by Forbes, with his wealth largely attributed to his cement business.
