Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has insisted that his vast business empire was built entirely from scratch and not through inherited wealth.
In an interview originally uploaded by Bloomberg in January 2020, which resurfaced online on Tuesday, the billionaire reflected on his family history, revealing that his great-grandfather, Alhassan Dantata, was regarded as West Africa’s richest man in the 1940s, while his grandfather was also among Nigeria’s wealthiest.
“The family name is Dantata. That’s from my maternal side,” he explained.
He acknowledged that his father was “fairly rich” through business and politics, but he made a deliberate choice not to retain any inherited fortune.
“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. Whatever I inherited in assets, I gave on to charity,” Dangote said.
He recalled starting out in Lagos with a modest cement trading venture before moving into manufacturing.
“Cement is what builds infrastructure, and we have huge deficits. When we started, the majority of cement in Nigeria was imported, and that is why we went in there,” he explained.
Nigeria faces a housing deficit of about 17,000 units, he noted, a challenge mirrored across Africa.
That need, Dangote said, shaped his heavy investment in local cement production.
Today, the Dangote Group operates more than 15 subsidiaries across at least 10 African countries, spanning cement, sugar, salt, fertiliser, oil refining, petrochemicals, steel, transport, logistics, and real estate.
Its publicly listed companies include Dangote Cement Plc, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, and NASCON Allied Industries Plc.