Aliko Dangote is a man revered for his remarkable achievements in business and his passion for his country. As I wait patiently in his office at Union Marble House, in the plush Lagos suburb of Ikoyi, an inscribed plaque catches my eye. Before I can read it, I hear a man’s voice.
“Nothing is impossible. That is my mantra in life. No matter what you go through, just remember, nothing is impossible for you to achieve and you will overcome it.”
Dangote, Africa’s richest man and the founder of Dangote Group, is dressed in a blue suit and purple tie. His demeanor is warm and welcoming, his gaze attentive. It is hard to believe this soft-spoken man is worth an estimated $14.4 billion, according to FORBES. Despite this wealth, the plaque in his office serves as a reminder of a day he almost lost everything. It all began with a wrong soil test.
“We were importing cement and we had an import terminal in Lagos and Port Harcourt. The government gave incentives to people who will make Nigeria self-sufficient in cement and so we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and build a cement plant. At the time, the entire production of Nigeria was less than two million tons but we decided that we were going to go ahead and build a [plant with] five million tons capacity,” says Dangote.
<div id="attachment_5094" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5094" class="size-medium wp-image-5094" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/aliko-dangote-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Founder and Chief Executive of the Dangote Group Aliko Dangote gestures during an interview with Reuters in his office in Lagos, June 13, 2012. Picture taken June 13, 2012 REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye (NIGERIA &#8211; Tags: BUSINESS) &#8211; RTR37GOU</div>
“So we brought in a contractor and we asked them to do the soil test and also the foundation test. Then they gave us the wrong soil test. Normally the northern part of Nigeria has very hard ground. But they came back and said we just needed a shallow foundation with a maximum of two meters. So the drawing and everything was done based on a two-meter foundation. As soon as we were three months into the job we realized it was more than this.”
This marked the beginning of a long battle to salvage the multi-million-dollar project. The group had hedged everything on the cement factory. In order to stay ahead of the competition, Dangote decided not to do a proper feasibility study so as to avoid attention to the new project. That decision came at a high cost.
“So now we had to go and do piling. We had to stop and change all the drawings and all of a sudden we were faced with 1,000 piles to be built and there were not enough rigs in Nigeria. So we had to order new rigs and even buy rigs for some of the contractors,” says Dangote.
To make matters worse, Dangote needed to finance the project.
“We needed to raise $480 million but the problem was 90 percent of the banks at the time had a market capital of only $20 million. In addition, there were no long-term loans, only short-term loans for about 90 days, so you could tell the challenge we faced. The project stopped, we had to change the drawings and we could not borrow too much money in the system. Borrowing short term and investing in a long-term business was so difficult.”
Another problem was infrastructure.
“We realized that we had to build a gas pipeline because the government who promised to build the pipeline in 1978 had actually not done anything, so we had to construct 92 kilometers of a gas pipeline. The water table was very bad in the area so we had to build a dam and over 100 houses because there was nothing there, so the challenges were coming one by one.”
For Dangote, failure was not an option.
“In my office, I had the project drawings on my wall but I knew that once this project fails the group is gone and that is what really kept me going. It was a major project for us because our size, compared to a project of half a billion then, was big money for us.”
Eventually, there was light at the end of the tunnel. The group received a much-needed lifeline in the form of a $479-million loan from a consortium of banks, led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). But the storm hadn’t abated yet.
“The most challenging was when we had the cost overrun. Now we had finished the cement factory and the factory was not working and that was really when I went from black to red. I knew that we were really in trouble. But we were very adamant and we persevered. We had challenges for over a year or so and the factory was working on and off,” he says.
That was in 2003. Since then, the Dangote Group has expanded into 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as Nepal. This year, Dangote plans to take on a new challenge, the volatile oil market.
“We have been pushed into oil because we realized that we had too much cash for the type of business that we are running today, so we need to diversify. On the diversification strategy, we look at what the areas are that can actually take Nigerians to the next level and that is where we map out all the issues and the problems that we are facing as a country for lack of diversifying the economy.”
The group is building one of the largest oil refineries in the country with the potential to meet Nigeria’s requirement of 445,000 to 550,000 barrels of fuel, with spare capacity to export, according to Dangote. The project has an estimated completion date of 2018.
As we wrap up the interview, Dangote’s gaze goes back to the plaque on his table.
“It was a challenging experience and that is why I have the plaque on the table saying nothing is impossible. You need tenacity and focus in business. I have learned a lot and since that time I don’t really get scared of anything.”

“I Knew That We Were Really  In Trouble”

<h3>ALIKO DANGOTE</h3>
<div id="attachment_224" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-224" class="size-medium wp-image-224" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_7510-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Aliko Dangote</div>
<h3>Founder and president of Dangote Group</h3>
As Africa’s richest man and business warrior, Aliko Dangote traverses the world leaving little time for interviews. He recently brought himself a $45 million Bombardier jet to save time. In May, Dangote was in China to sign a deal with Sinoma International Engineering Company. This deal means 10 new cement plants across the African continent, at an estimated cost of $3.9 billion, in just over three years’ time.
In this rare encounter, at the Transcor Hilton in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, he appeared relaxed, passionate about Africa, as well as pleased to be nominated as a Person of the Year by FORBES AFRICA.
“I feel great about it. I consider the recognition an honour and appreciation of what we are trying to do in the private sector. One thing people usually don’t understand is that what the Dangote Group is trying to achieve is something that our political leaders have failed to achieve in terms of reaching Africa economically. We are now in 14 African countries and wherever there’s an opportunity on the continent, we are very keen to explore it,” he says.
These are busy times for the Dangote Group, next year it plans to move into petrochemicals.
“It’s really a green area in Nigeria but we believe it’s an opportunity provided by the country’s endowment of gas,” he says.
“In our cement business, we are expanding massively on the continent, looking to raise our annual production capacity on the continent to about 60 million metric tons. Our target is to be number one in terms of profitability. In terms of agriculture, we have a sugar refinery where we process imported raw sugar, but we are looking at backward integration that will lead to the employment of 50,000 Nigerians. Going forward, from 2012 to 2015 we intend to invest $7 billion in Africa.”
It is the fruit of decades of risk taking that began with his cement plant back in Obajana, in Kogi State, 220km south west of where we are sitting. Dangote took the risk and invested in a five million tons plant – at a time when the entire Nigerian production was a mere 1.2 million tons.
“We saw the growth potential of the market and took the risk betting that the more we produce, the more the demand. I recall that my late friend and former CEO of Guarentee Trust Bank, Tayo Aderinokun, said that I was taking a big risk, but I believed that it will pay off. Today, Dangote Cement alone has a production capacity of 20 million tons and the rest of the market has eight million tons and we are starting another project to add a fresh 9 million tons in the next 60 days,” he says.
The impact of the Dangote Group has also been felt in the Lagos Stock Market. Last October, the group listed on an exchange erstwhile dominated by the banks. Dangote Cement is now one of the largest capitalized companies on the bourse, accounting for a quarter of the stock market.
Dangote believes passionately this is the time for Africa.
“I personally think there will be another recession because Europe will not be able to handle Greece and Italy at the same time. But Africa has the advantage of high growth rates on low debt. It’s the reverse in Europe. As a result, I think it’s only a matter of time for more investors to shift focus to Africa, which is more profitable. Money has no color and so investors will be attracted more to this continent because of its potential. If Lafarge of Blue Circle were more aggressive about investing in Africa in the past, Dangote would not have grown to this level because they could have blocked that opportunity with the cash and scale they have. Today, our Nigerian operation alone is a $14 billion business that we never dreamt would happen,” he says.
Dangote inspires many entrepreneurs in Africa, we ask whether there are many other investors like him in the continent.
“There are people that have cash but not heart and guts. They know the potential, but think of the headaches. But the truth is that nothing is easy in life. I think there can be even bigger companies than Dangote. It’s all about guts. Ten years ago, it was difficult to imagine our company achieving a valuation of $1 billion… I never in my wildest dreams at the beginning thought I would achieve 1% of what we’ve achieved. Nothing is impossible,” he says.
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“I Knew That We Were Really In Trouble”

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