Aliko Dangote started by trading sugar and salt in Kano. Today his group makes cement, sugar and more.
Born in Kano in 1957, Aliko Dangote began with a small trading company at twenty and built the Dangote Group into one of Africa’s best-known industrial businesses.
Kano is a trading city, and Aliko Dangote grew up in a family of traders. He was born there in 1957 to a business family, and his mother was a businesswoman too. After secondary school he studied business at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, then moved to Lagos to chase a deal of his own.
In 1977, at around twenty, he founded the Dangote Group as a small commodities company importing sugar, salt and food products. Four years later came Dangote Nigeria Limited and Blue Star Services, which imported rice and bulk materials such as steel and aluminium.
From importer to manufacturer
The big shift was from trading goods to making them. Nigeria’s demand for cement was high, and imports from the French giant Lafarge dominated. Dangote built Dangote Cement to compete. By 2023, public figures put the company’s revenue at about 3.7 billion dollars, and the Dangote Sugar Refinery is counted among the largest sugar producers in Nigeria and Africa.
Recognition followed: Nigeria’s Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger in 2011, and a place on TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2014.
The story is simple to say and hard to do. Start with what you know, trade it, then use the profits to build the factory that makes it.
