How Aliko Dangote Turned A $3000 Loan Into A $19 Billion Empire

According to Forbes and Bloomberg, Aliko Dangote has emerged as Africa’s richest businessman and the world’s wealthiest Black man in the last decade.

Hundreds of Africans, African Americans, and other minorities around the world have been inspired by his story.

Aliko Dangote’s net worth

Dangote’s net worth is $12.7 billion, according to Forbes, and 19.0 billion according to Bloomberg. He makes most of his money from Dangote Cement, one of Africa’s most successful and well-known brands.

His cement factory has a capacity of 48.6 million metric tons per year and operates in ten African countries.

Dangote, in addition to his cement factory, also manufactures sugar and, until recently, fertilizer and oil refinery. His refinery, which is still under construction, is expected to be one of the world’s largest, reducing Nigeria’s reliance on imported refined crude.

Furthermore, he is involved in car assembly under the name Dangote Peugeot Automobiles Nigeria Limited (DPAN). The Land Trek, 3008, 5008, and the new 508 were the first vehicles to be assembled.

Personal Life of Aliko Dangote

How did Dangote begin his journey to becoming the world’s richest Black person and a successful businessman?

Dangote was born 65 years ago into a wealthy trading family from northern Nigeria.

Alhassan Dantata, Dangote’s grandfather, primarily traded in kola nuts and groundnuts. Dantata, on the other hand, was one of the wealthiest men in the British West African colonies.

“My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader who died as the richest man in West Africa,” he told Time Magazine at a World Economic Forum event. “My father was a politician and a businessman. My grandfather actually raised me. It is customary in my culture for grandparents to raise the first grandchild. I was surrounded by love, which gave me a lot of confidence.”

Despite coming from a wealthy family, Dangote has forged his own entrepreneurial path.

He began looking for his own money at a very young age, while still in primary school. To earn money at school, he will sell candies.

He also worked hard for his uncle, Sani Dangote, which helped to set the stage and lay the groundwork for him to dominate the business world.

“I can remember when I was in primary school, I would go and buy cartons of sweets (candies) and I would start selling them just to make money. “Even back then, I was very interested in business,” he said.

He approached his uncle for a loan to start a business shortly after finishing his degree in business studies and administration at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, one of the largest Islamic universities.

Aliko Dangote’s Uncle Gives Him a $3000 Loan to Start a Business

His uncle eventually provided him with a $3000 loan to begin importing and selling agricultural products in Nigeria.

From Thailand and Brazil, he traded sugar, rice, pasta, salt, cotton, millet, cocoa, textiles, and vegetable oil.

His business was an instant success, and he repaid his uncle’s loan in three months.

Dangote Cement Company

In 1973, he entered the cement industry, purchasing trucks and reselling them to others for a profit.

He dumbed down cement and began selling sugar, rice, and other commodities.

He eventually returned to the cement industry by opening a factory. In the first year, he went from having no market share to controlling about 45 percent of the market in Nigeria.

“Now the country is producing 42 million tons, of which 29 million tons are ours—and we benefit not only from Nigeria, but we’ve also been able to go to 17 other African countries,” he told Bloomberg. We’ll have 80 million tons of capacity by 2019.”

His cement factory’s success inspired him to begin manufacturing some of the products he was importing or purchasing from others.

In 1997, he built a factory and began producing pasta, sugar, salt, and flour.

Companies in the Aliko Dangote Group

Today, all of his businesses are part of the Dangote Group, of which he is chairman. The company employs over 30,000 people in Nigeria and throughout Africa. Dangote Group companies include Dangote Cement Plc, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, and Dangote Flour Mills Plc.

Dangote Pasta Plant Limited, Dangote Agro Sacks Limited Prayer Mats Production, Dangote Salt Plc Ports Operations Haulage Steel Production, Dangote Foods Limited Real Estate Telecommunications Oil Refinery Petrochemicals Fertilisers, and Dangote Foods Limited Real Estate Telecommunications Oil Refinery Petrochemicals Fertilisers are among the others.

Dangote’s rise to become one of Africa’s and the world’s most powerful and successful entrepreneurs demonstrate the potential of African youth to succeed in the field of entrepreneurship and in any endeavor, given the necessary enabling environment, which is often lacking.

READ ALSO; Keke Palmer Bio, Net Worth, Age, Wife, Children, Parents, Movies & Tv Shows