Aliko Dangote on His Wealth, Business Advice and Africa’s Future

Who am I here with today? Aliko Dangote.

What was the most amount of money you've made in a single year?

Well, first quarter we did about 10 billion dollars.

10 billion dollars? Did you have any idea growing up that you were going to build a company?

No, no, no, no, not even 1%. You started off selling candy to classmates.

Yes. Today, what is your net worth? What are they saying? I don't really look at those things.

Forbes says that you're worth over 30 billion dollars.

Yeah, they say I'm worth 38 billion, but you know, most of our businesses are not listed yet.

It will come out soon. The reason why I say that is everyone I've met say that you're incredibly humble.

How have you stayed so humble despite becoming the richest person in Africa?

I've actually passed the stage of just doing business to make money.

It is to leave a legacy. How do you want to be remembered?

I want to be remembered as somebody who has industrialized Africa.

That's what I want. Why Africa? Why should Americans be looking to invest in Africa?

Today in Africa, 70% of our population, they are below 30 years of age.

By 2050, we're going to be 2.5 billion of population.

The real future is Africa. You mastered the art of sales at an early age.

What is your best sales and negotiation advice to anybody in business?

Learn to be like the Chinese. You know, Chinese, they know how to wire people out in negotiation.

But the first thing that you have to do is that you must actually treat the customer as a king.

As a king? Yes, he's a king. You don't sell your goods, you can't grow.

You didn't build your fortune chasing trends.

You built a cement company. You built a rice company, a flour.

But my question is, what did you know about building boring businesses that nobody else knew?

These are things that we need. And these were things that I was trading in.

So I tried to do what you call backward integration to now produce what we used to import.

And now we're going into oil and gas, where the scale is huge.

My final question for you, do you believe in God?

Oh, 100%. How did you know God was real?

If I look at myself, I know that God is real.

Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate that.

And I connect with all the billionaires that I interview.

Could I get your contact? Yes. Is that cool?

He'll give you, yeah.