Africa's richest person controls Dangote Industries, a closely held conglomerate. The Lagos, Nigeria-based company owns sub-Saharan Africa's biggest cement producer, Dangote Cement, and the continent's largest oil refinery. It also has interests in sugar, salt, oil, fertilizer and packaged food.
Dangote owns a collection of industrial assets through his Lagos-based company, Dangote Group.
His biggest asset is the Dangote Oil Refinery, Africa's largest refiner, which began operating in early 2024. He owns 92.3% stake of the project which is valued based on the amount it cost to build it: $20 billion. He also owns a fertilizer plant with capacity to produce up to 2.8 million tonnes of urea annually. Its valued based on a net present value calculation by an independent analyst that assumes a 50% utilization rate.
Several of Dangote Group's companies are listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. He owns 86% of the country's biggest cement producer, Dangote Cement as well as stakes in Dangote Sugar, Nascon Allied Industries and United Bank for Africa. His stakes in the publicly traded companies are held directly and through Dangote Industries, a unit of Dangote Group. He also owns closely held businesses operating in food manufacturing, agriculture, packaging and other industries, which are valued based on their investment cost according to Dangote Group's 2023 audited financial statements.
The billionaire owns six residential and commercial properties in Lagos. They are valued using the capitalization method, using rental income provided by Dangote's spokesman, Anthony Chiejina, and capitalization rates from CBRE Broll Nigeria.
The value of his combined cash holdings in naira and dollars is based on information from Dangote in 2024.
Africa's richest person was born in Kano, Nigeria, in 1957. His great-grandfather became one of the richest men in west Africa trading kola and ground nuts. Dangote's father died when he was eight, leaving him to be raised by his maternal grandfather, who was a building materials trader.
After graduating from Egypt's Al-Azhar University with a degree in business, Dangote returned to Nigeria, where he started his own cement trading business funded by a loan from his uncle. He moved from Kano to Lagos, and ramped up imports. In 1981, he formed the corporation that later became Dangote Group.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Dangote diversified his operation to include trading sugar, flour, fish, rice, milk and iron. After traveling to Brazil to study manufacturing in 1996, Dangote shifted the company's focus from trading to manufacturing, believing there was an opportunity to create a local operation that would profit from meeting the basic consumer needs of Nigeria's growing population.
Dangote began building salt and sugar refineries, flour mills and a pasta factory in 1999. A year later, he bought the Benue Cement Co. from the Nigerian government. He later commissioned the Obajana Cement Plant, currently the largest cement facility in sub-Saharan Africa.
Today, Dangote Group's main publicly traded businesses -- Dangote Cement, Dangote Sugar, and Nascon Allied Industries -- make up about one-third of the market capitalization of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The Dangote Oil Refinery began operating in early 2024 after 11 years of planning and construction at a cost of $20 billion.
A practicing Muslim, Dangote goes by the title "Alhaji," an honorific granted to a man who has completed the pilgrimage to Mecca. Twice divorced, he lives in Lagos.