CEOInterviews.AIAliko Dangote: The $13 Billion Bet to Transform Africa's Economy

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Host0:08

Greetings to everyone, to all Africans around the world. Today is Sunday, July 12th, 2026. Welcome to the United States of Africa, your premier platform for the ideas, the leaders, and the industrial movements shaping the future of our continent. Before we dive into today's extraordinary broadcast, take a moment to hit that subscribe button, like this video, and activate your notifications. We are on a mission to bridge the borders that divide us by liking, commenting, and sharing this broadcast across your WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and all your social media platforms. You are actively helping to connect all Africans and promote deep lasting unity across the continent. Do your part for the global African family. Share this link right now. In the exclusive feature we are about to play, global media icon Mo Ibrahim sits down in a candid conversation with Aliko Dangote, Africa's foremost industrialist and investor. Now, this powerful interview took place seven years ago, but we are sharing it with you today because its message is timeless and incredibly vital for all of us. What you are about to witness is a rare, unfiltered look into what it takes to build a modern empire on African soil. Dangote pulls back the curtain on his staggering oil refinery project just outside of Lagos, which was then a massive 12 to 13 billion undertaking requiring the world's largest dredges, 136,000 foundational piles and unprecedented private infrastructure. But this conversation goes far deeper than engineering. It tackles the raw systemic bottlenecks that have held Africa back for years. You will hear Dangote speak with refreshing candor about the hard realities of doing business across borders. From the frustrations of regional trade barriers that block local goods while welcoming overseas imports to the sheer absurdity of an African billionaire needing visas for 38 different African countries despite holding an official African Union passport. From the immense job creating power of revolutionized agriculture to the critical need for absolute political will, this interview lays bare a visionary blueprint for true economic integration that we all need to hear. Let's roll the footage. Our second interview today we have another iconic African in a totally different sphere. We had Amina in the morning. Now we have Aliko Dangote. He is the most famous industrialist and investor in Africa. I think I don't need to introduce him. Aliko, you're welcome.

A

Aliko Dangote3:22

Thank you. Thank you.

M

Mo Ibrahim3:23

For joining us.

A

Aliko Dangote3:25

Thank you.

M

Mo Ibrahim3:25

I know.

A

Aliko Dangote3:26

Great pleasure.

M

Mo Ibrahim3:26

You lose a lot of money by stopping working and coming here, but

A

Aliko Dangote3:33

You know, but sometimes it's okay.

M

Mo Ibrahim3:35

Yeah. Sometimes you have to do also.

A

Aliko Dangote3:37

You have to. Yes, definitely.

M

Mo Ibrahim3:38

That kind of makes you civil society is not bad.

A

Aliko Dangote3:42

We do.

M

Mo Ibrahim3:43

Okay. Right. Aliko. For the last year we have been talking on and off about this very ambitious project. I mean when you we all knew you as a cement man, the man who makes cement everywhere in Africa. And suddenly we hear that you became an oil man and in oil you went into the most complicated area. You did not buy a block of oil from the government.

A

Aliko Dangote4:20

We are there also.

M

Mo Ibrahim4:22

You are also there.

A

Aliko Dangote4:23

Yes.

M

Mo Ibrahim4:24

Okay,

A

Aliko Dangote4:24

We bought two blocks from Shell.

M

Mo Ibrahim4:26

You got two blocks over there. Okay. People think that's easy, but you know, you get a block and if you discover something, you sell it to one of the oil majors and make your money and you go to Regent's Park or sorry in London and we have many of those guys in London. We have but you are doing something very unusual. He decided to build one of the largest industrial facilities in the world, actually not only in Africa, it is a huge undertaking. What is the capital cost of this project you're doing?

A

Aliko Dangote5:01

Well, in that particular location we were spending about 12 to 13 billion.

M

Mo Ibrahim5:09

12 and 13? You heard this number.

A

Aliko Dangote5:11

12 to 13.

M

Mo Ibrahim5:12

12 to 13 billion. Yes.

And this means you are betting everything. You're betting your shirt on this.

A

Aliko Dangote5:24

Correct. Well, I'm betting quite a lot. Yes.

M

Mo Ibrahim5:26

Betting quite a lot in this.

A

Aliko Dangote5:27

Quite a lot. No. Yes.

M

Mo Ibrahim5:29

Okay. That is wonderful. But can you tell us what exactly you are doing and why it cost all this amount of money?

A

Aliko Dangote5:37

Well, actually, thank you very much Mo. First of all, I would like to thank you for inviting me to this Mo Ibrahim's weekend. It's a great pleasure to be here. Yesterday, I was actually sweating when there was an accident going to the airport.

M

Mo Ibrahim5:54

Where? In London?

A

Aliko Dangote5:55

In London. Yeah. You know, because Stansted airport closes at 10:00. I said that well if I'm not able to make it.

M

Mo Ibrahim6:03

I'll never talk to you again.

A

Aliko Dangote6:04

I know. And that's more expensive than my project. You know why this guy is charming, you know. Anyway, thank you very much. So really what we have today Mo is that we have almost about five major projects. We have the refinery which is 650,000 barrels per day.

M

Mo Ibrahim6:30

650,000

A

Aliko Dangote6:32

Barrels per day. We have the petrochemical which is 1.3 million tons of polypropylene polyethylene, which will make us the second largest exporter of petroleum products in sub-Saharan Africa after Sasol. Then we have 3 million tons of urea and ammonia which is fertilizer, and also we have the gas pipeline but the three have actually moved very very fast. And then we have the cement. We are doing about $2 billion worth of expansion in the cement. And then agriculture we have rice, a million tons which we are building with integrated power because we are in the localities where we are going to process, do boiling. You know the rice we eat is different than the rice here in Koduba. We eat parboiled rice. So you have to boil the rice and do the process. With all this, the most challenging one which is really very good is the refinery. It has opened our eyes to see the lack of infrastructure in Africa.

M

Mo Ibrahim7:50

Now let us dissect. We're going to do a forensic audit of what you are doing now.

A

Aliko Dangote7:57

Okay.

M

Mo Ibrahim7:57

So let's take it one by one.

A

Aliko Dangote7:59

Bombard. All right.

M

Mo Ibrahim8:00

Okay. This big refinery and associated installations you are making. Can you describe it to us? What exactly is it? Is it just some pipes bringing crude and you are refining this and then pumping it back or no? What do you have to do?

A

Aliko Dangote8:20

We have the refinery. First of all, let me tell you the challenges and what we are facing. It's just outside Lagos. We took up a land which is about 2.7 million square meters.

M

Mo Ibrahim8:36

2.7 million.

A

Aliko Dangote8:38

Yeah. Square meters is huge. It is massive. Internal roads alone we have 136 kilometers of drainage. Some of them as wide as 40 meters. We have 200 kilometers of fence. 240 kilometers of roads you have to create. No, 336 kilometers of road. And drainage we have about 213 kilometers. But the most challenging is that the land was a jungle, it was marshland. We had to clear all the trees, and then we pumped 65 million cubic meters of sand, which is quite a lot. We had to bring the two world's biggest dredges to work there continuously for almost about 10 to 11 months.

M

Mo Ibrahim9:38

So you get the sand from the seabed?

A

Aliko Dangote9:41

From the sea. Yes. From the sea into the land.

M

Mo Ibrahim9:44

Okay.

A

Aliko Dangote9:44

And when we finished that, we were faced with the quality of the soil. Our refinery, not the fertilizer, the finer section alone has the highest number of piles you can find anywhere in the world, which is 136,000 piles. It's huge. Everything about this refinery is very very huge. You can see the regenerator which they are showing here.

M

Mo Ibrahim10:13

That is what?

A

Aliko Dangote10:15

Yes. This one is weighing 3,000 metric tons.

M

Mo Ibrahim10:21

That's a... you have to generate your own power.

A

Aliko Dangote10:24

No, no, no. This regenerator regenerates the crude.

M

Mo Ibrahim10:28

You generate the crude.

A

Aliko Dangote10:31

Yes. So we have this, but the real challenge of the project is that we have to build our own port because none of the ports in Nigeria can actually take the things we get from Korea.

M

Mo Ibrahim10:51

From Korea?

A

Aliko Dangote10:54

From Korea. And you managed to ship it all the way from Korea to... we have actually seven of these. This is the biggest. Then we have another smaller ones. And this thing has to be rolled out. The ports in Nigeria, the heaviest equipment they can take might be maybe 150 tons or so. And we are faced with the roads. If you look at what this one is going to go on, they put on this and we have to build a special road for all our equipment to be able to pass.

M

Mo Ibrahim11:30

What is this creature?

A

Aliko Dangote11:34

Which one is that?

M

Mo Ibrahim11:35

The other one, the other one is the heaters.

A

Aliko Dangote11:40

Well, it's no filters and heaters. They are the same.

M

Mo Ibrahim11:44

Okay. To ensure the flow of...

A

Aliko Dangote11:47

Yeah, the flow of the oil to heat it up. We have a lot of various. We have an equal one which is a 42-story building.

M

Mo Ibrahim11:56

You showed me some pictures of massive cranes. You said you have to get some of the world's biggest.

A

Aliko Dangote12:03

There are only three of them available in the world. There are 5,000-ton cranes.

M

Mo Ibrahim12:09

5,000 tons.

A

Aliko Dangote12:10

Yes. So that one you have to book maybe a year and a half, two years in advance because there are only three in the world.

M

Mo Ibrahim12:16

The whole world.

A

Aliko Dangote12:16

Yeah. In the whole world. Yeah. They're only...

M

Mo Ibrahim12:18

You have photographs of this stuff?

A

Aliko Dangote12:20

Yeah. This is the crane.

M

Mo Ibrahim12:22

This is the...

A

Aliko Dangote12:22

This crane is huge.

M

Mo Ibrahim12:27

That's the crane.

A

Aliko Dangote12:28

Yes. It has not been fully assembled. This crane has equipment of 205 containers which they have to couple together. So these are some of these.

M

Mo Ibrahim12:41

Is this accumulation or what?

A

Aliko Dangote12:42

No, no, no. These are the heaters.

M

Mo Ibrahim12:47

I thought you were doing real estate as well. No?

A

Aliko Dangote12:49

No, it's not real estate. But the site, we have over 30 kilometers of fencing. 30 kilometers of concrete fencing at the site. So we have quite a lot of challenge. But what this will give us at the end of the day is 650,000 barrels of crude processing and total number of products that we will produce will be about 32 million tons. So 32 million tons means that Nigeria will actually be one of the largest exporters in Africa of petroleum products. So what we are trying to do is to do exactly like what we did in cement. Nigeria used to be number two in the world after US in cement importation, and now Nigeria is self-sufficient and by this year Nigeria will be the largest exporter of cement in Africa.

M

Mo Ibrahim13:50

Okay. With 8 million tons of export.

A

Aliko Dangote13:52

Right.

M

Mo Ibrahim13:52

But I think this is wonderful. This is a courageous man to put all, you know, he bet the bank and everything on such a massive technological project which in Africa we are not famous for. We always go for the soft stuff. And I'm not aware of any major private investment in Africa at that scale, which is funded by local people.

A

Aliko Dangote14:20

Yes.

M

Mo Ibrahim14:24

And that is... Can you give him a hand really for what he's doing?

Now we come to cement. I know you have a number of cement facilities. In how many countries are you producing?

A

Aliko Dangote14:43

12 to 14 in total. The operational ones about 11. Then we have about three new countries.

M

Mo Ibrahim14:50

Now let me ask you a question. You had to do 14 factories.

A

Aliko Dangote14:55

No, more than 14 factories. 14 countries.

M

Mo Ibrahim14:58

14 countries. So you have more than one in some countries.

A

Aliko Dangote14:59

Yeah. Like in South Africa we have two. In Nigeria we have three. We're building the fourth one. Let me give you the scale of our industries. In Nigeria we have one single location where we are producing about 13 million tons.

M

Mo Ibrahim15:16

13 million tons.

A

Aliko Dangote15:17

13 today, but by end of this year it will be 16, which is by far outstripping the whole production of South Africa.

M

Mo Ibrahim15:25

So you're going to end up producing more than South Africa in that location alone.

A

Aliko Dangote15:29

Just one location.

M

Mo Ibrahim15:31

South Africans watch out. You guys are becoming history.

A

Aliko Dangote15:35

Yeah. So we have there in Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Congo, Brazil, you know, most of the countries. We're there in Cameroon. We're actually building another 3 million tons here in Koduba, just about an hour from here.

M

Mo Ibrahim16:01

Now strategically, when you start to build this empire of cement manufacturing, are you looking at markets and raw materials and transport, but was it necessary to build in 14 countries? I mean, couldn't you build in four or five key locations and then transport to other countries, or are the customs barriers forcing you to put factories sometimes where it is not optimum to do so?

A

Aliko Dangote16:34

Well, there are several reasons. One of the reasons first is that it is not easy to move around.

M

Mo Ibrahim16:42

It's not easy to move around.

A

Aliko Dangote16:43

It's not easy to move around. That's number one. Number two, it depends on the country whether they have limestone, which is our key raw material.

M

Mo Ibrahim16:50

That's what I thought. Some locations would be more...

A

Aliko Dangote16:52

Yeah. Well, it depends. Let me give you an example because you've talked about movement within Africa. Take for instance our factory in Nigeria which is in a place called Igbashi. It's not far away from Obasanjo's house.

M

Mo Ibrahim17:08

Okay.

A

Aliko Dangote17:09

Yeah.

M

Mo Ibrahim17:10

You put it there because of...

A

Aliko Dangote17:14

It's because of the limestone actually. So we have the factory there. We're only 28 kilometers into Republic of Benin. But Republic of Benin does not allow us to take cement into Benin, but they import from China.

M

Mo Ibrahim17:32

Why?

A

Aliko Dangote17:33

It's one of the areas that I keep always discussing with my very good friend Vera. I'm sure she's somewhere here. And I always tell Vera, 'Vera, please can you make the regional markets in Africa to work before we go to an AfCFTA?' Now let me just get to the bottom of this.

M

Mo Ibrahim17:54

Could it be the Chinese cement cheaper than your cement?

A

Aliko Dangote17:57

No, no, no, no. It's whatever. If the market is selling for zero, we are willing to compete at zero. So we'll just take and sell whatever.

M

Mo Ibrahim18:06

So you are having to compete at price.

A

Aliko Dangote18:07

No, no, no. It's not about competition. It's about allowing us to go eat.

M

Mo Ibrahim18:11

So how come they allow Chinese and don't allow Nigerians?

A

Aliko Dangote18:14

Honestly, Mo, you should ask the president of the country. He will give you...

M

Mo Ibrahim18:18

Do you have anybody from Benin here?

A

Aliko Dangote18:20

No.

M

Mo Ibrahim18:21

I'm sure nobody will rise up. Do you?

Okay. Why are you doing that? No answer. Please, when you go home, ask why. Why are you doing something silly like that? I mean, if it's cheaper I understand, but if it's not cheaper, why?

A

Aliko Dangote18:53

Because really the AfCFTA is a very good thing. But my issue is that even if we sign, what about the implementation? You are very good at designing programs, but implementation is key, which is really missing. Because we talked about free trade areas. ECOWAS talked about borderless region. Is that happening in reality or not?

M

Mo Ibrahim19:26

Well, actually it's not happening in reality. The biggest issue is allowing movement. Today, if we are going to take cement to say maybe Togo, we're going to spend almost a week for just 210 kilometers.

A

Aliko Dangote19:44

Is it the roads or is it the customs?

M

Mo Ibrahim19:47

It's the customs.

A

Aliko Dangote19:49

Yeah. You sleep at the border when you get there.

M

Mo Ibrahim19:52

Why?

A

Aliko Dangote19:52

Yeah. Because it's just corruption.

M

Mo Ibrahim19:55

You have to pay in order to get your cement across.

A

Aliko Dangote19:58

Well, we don't pay. But maybe that's why they are holding us. But even people who are paying, they have to spend that long period of time also.

M

Mo Ibrahim20:05

It's a long process. Yes. So I think the CFTA will help us. But I think before we jump to CFTA, we must make sure that the regional markets are working very well.

A

Aliko Dangote20:17

Right. I think there is some practical issue here which people need to think about. We keep celebrating in Addis Ababa signing agreements and borders and movement free, and here we have a situation where it takes a week to move goods 280 kilometers between two neighboring countries. And then you are unable to say that no, don't bring your goods here. I think when you look at it, a place like Republic of Benin, Togo, and Côte d'Ivoire, they are the ones that would benefit more in terms of regional markets. Because if I'm from Benin or I have business in Benin, it means that I don't only have market for 14 or 15 million people, I have Nigeria's market which is 200 million. Because the economic activities of Nigeria is mainly in the southwest which is 60%, and Republic of Benin is like part and parcel of that area. I mean, it's easier for me to take my cement into Republic of Benin than going to Lagos, even though I'm near. We have been talking about regional integration and all this stuff, and it's not happening on the ground.

M

Mo Ibrahim21:42

Vera, are you here?

A

Aliko Dangote21:43

Yeah, she's right there.

M

Mo Ibrahim21:45

Okay, we'll get to you.

No, I think this conversation is important to really show what's happening actually on the ground. I think a couple of us have a lot of work in our hands to do. I mean today, for example, what I keep saying, luckily people like Vera are there, they are pushing. They have done this African Union passports.

A

Aliko Dangote22:16

Passports.

M

Mo Ibrahim22:17

Yes, okay.

A

Aliko Dangote22:18

I haven't got one yet. I don't know why.

M

Mo Ibrahim22:20

No, they have to give you one. Definitely, it's better for you. Because if you see my passports, I carry six to seven passports because of visas. And even though I'm an investor, I need visas in almost 38 countries out of 55 or so. So now they have issued us with the African Union passport. About few of us, we've gotten the first three of us.

How much do I have to pay for that?

A

Aliko Dangote22:51

No, I didn't pay anything.

M

Mo Ibrahim22:52

Come on. I mean, no, no, no. But look, I haven't got one. I support African Union. They didn't give me one.

A

Aliko Dangote23:00

You must have something for those guys.

M

Mo Ibrahim23:02

No, we got it. It is in Addis Ababa at the African Union. So I've got one. But let me tell you this, the one that I have, I went to South Africa quite okay. And I think carrying a Nigerian passport or South African passport...

A

Aliko Dangote23:19

No, no, no. Carrying African Union passport.

M

Mo Ibrahim23:21

African Union passport.

A

Aliko Dangote23:22

Yes. But this same African Union passport, I'm sorry, since we're all talking very openly, I was invited by the president of Angola to come and see him. And I had to go. Normally I don't travel much during fasting period, but I went. And when I went there, I had to be given a visa on African Union passport.

M

Mo Ibrahim23:54

Maybe there is a fee for the visa.

A

Aliko Dangote23:57

No fee. It's not about fee. When you say African Union passport, everywhere free of charge.

M

Mo Ibrahim24:05

That was the agreement.

A

Aliko Dangote24:06

Yes. So I had to apply for a visa. And intentionally, when I applied for the visa, I also applied on African Union passport and I gave them that one to sample it.

M

Mo Ibrahim24:16

Maybe you need to send the picture of that to Moussa Faki to say...

A

Aliko Dangote24:20

No, no. I'm going to send it to Vera.

M

Mo Ibrahim24:25

She did. She did not issue the passport.

A

Aliko Dangote24:27

She... Yeah, but she should say, 'What is this? Is that useful?'

M

Mo Ibrahim24:31

No, I think she is in a position. Since she is dragging all of us to champion this CFTA, she needs to go and sort out these hanging issues. Then we all go out with her. Nigeria will sign tomorrow.

A

Aliko Dangote24:45

I tell you something. I in this trouble thing, I tell you honestly, I also have beside Sudanese passport, I have a British passport. I cannot use Sudanese passport anyway for obvious reasons. So I travel with British passport. I go everywhere. I get my visa in South Africa at...

M

Mo Ibrahim25:07

If you go to any of...

A

Aliko Dangote25:08

Because I say I'm... don't look British, but I have a British passport. So yes, but your own is even easier or very simple. I've been to most of these countries where somebody who is my assistant, who takes notes in the meeting, will be allowed in and they will not allow me in an African country.

M

Mo Ibrahim25:32

An African country. Yes.

A

Aliko Dangote25:34

Okay. Thank you very much. I think that's... what do you do with those guys anyway? Well, I think we need political will to be able to implement most of these things that we are signing. And I think in Africa, if you will allow British, European, Americans to get in there on visa, having visa on arrival, you should allow all Africans to get in there with no visas. And I keep telling them, I was on a panel with the prime minister of Mali and I asked him, 'Mr. Prime Minister, the people who are causing trouble in the other part of your country, did they come through the airports?' No, those guys don't need a visa. Boko Haram, that's exactly true. They don't need a visa. So whether you give visa or not, it's better you go and concentrate on the real issues. They go through with their tanks 5 km from the airport to cross with their tanks and they come into the cities with no...

M

Mo Ibrahim26:41

One thing before I need to talk a little bit about the issue of policy. But before we continue, there's one thing you mentioned about agriculture. Now I just want to know what exactly you're doing about agriculture. I look at agriculture as the one activity which can create a lot of jobs. Frankly, mining does not create jobs. You told me that you employ up to 70,000 people to build that refinery and stuff. I think there's a port need to be built and there's power and things, but these are not operational employment. This will be employed during the construction period. But when you operate, you develop a lot of skills. Yes. But when you operate, there will be only a couple of thousand or 3,000 something like that.

A

Aliko Dangote27:30

Yes. But the indirect employment is there also.

M

Mo Ibrahim27:34

Fine.

A

Aliko Dangote27:34

Yeah. But agriculture generates huge amount of...

M

Mo Ibrahim27:37

Much more.

A

Aliko Dangote27:38

That's why I'm interested in agriculture. Tell me what exactly are you doing in agriculture?

M

Mo Ibrahim27:43

Thank you. Mo, what we are doing in agriculture? We are building a 1 million tons rice per boiling and processing with power generation also attached to them. And with this, what we are doing is that we are giving the farmers seeds, apart from seeds with implements, and then when they finish the harvest, we buy the rice. But they have a choice also, so that we don't really hold them to ransom. They have a choice of selling to anybody who offers. So although we gave them the seeds and the supplies, the implements, if they need any additional money, we have a backup by our central bank to lend them money to enable them to...

Enable them.

A

Aliko Dangote28:29

Yes. Because in those areas it is very difficult for them to go and mortgage their houses and borrow money. So they can easily borrow money under soft terms. Somebody is not going to ask you to bring your grandmother's certificate of birth which you normally don't have.

M

Mo Ibrahim28:47

Okay. And those people when they finish, they sell you the rice and you are committed to be competitive.

A

Aliko Dangote28:55

Well, committed not because I lend you money you must give it to me cheap. No, no, no. What we have agreed with them is that if my price is not right, they should give to somebody, but they should come back and pay me my money.

M

Mo Ibrahim29:06

You pay your debt. Of course that's the debt. So that's what we have. But you see, you can imagine how many jobs we're going to create.

A

Aliko Dangote29:12

How many people are going to work on this?

M

Mo Ibrahim29:14

Both that one and the sugar in the next four years, we are actually creating about 150,000 jobs.

A

Aliko Dangote29:21

150,000 jobs. Yes.

M

Mo Ibrahim29:27

Interesting. I mean, this is one area where you can see the impact. We are not going to create that many jobs in the refinery which is $12 billion.

A

Aliko Dangote29:36

Yeah.

M

Mo Ibrahim29:36

But this one is just less than $2 billion. But you can see the amount of jobs. And yes, if we really in Africa want to create jobs and prosperity, and also somebody was telling me that there's great GDP growth here in Koduba, but it's not trickling down. Just like us also in Nigeria, when you look at it, even when we are having 7% to 8% GDP growth, down there they hardly see anything that trickles through. It is trickling slowly, not seriously. So the only way to have these things trickle fast enough is through agriculture. And that's why we have a greater advantage. You look at it, you have a ready market, which is the difficulty of a lot of continents, but we have a market because the African continent imports more goods than any other continent. So what we need to do is to make sure that we transform our own goods. And it is very important. Let me give you an example. Today, between Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, they actually produce two-thirds of the world's cocoa. But the total amount of their exports is about $6 billion. But the chocolate market is $100 billion. So you can see that they are just working for other people.

Yeah. The problem is how to create African brands.

A

Aliko Dangote31:09

We need to do that. Even if it's not African brand, that's why they should actually have some of these factories here.

M

Mo Ibrahim31:16

Yeah. But you need to create a brand in order to sell it. Marks and Spencer and markets everywhere.

A

Aliko Dangote31:22

Brand creation, Mo, is not really that difficult. The only thing you have to be sure of is that your quality is right and your pricing is right. Once you have that, nobody looks at where it is manufactured.

M

Mo Ibrahim31:38

Yeah.

A

Aliko Dangote31:38

Yeah. Because most of the shoes you buy in Italy are not manufactured in Italy. Especially in the US.

M

Mo Ibrahim31:46

US. I thought US stopped manufacturing. They say China does everything now.

A

Aliko Dangote31:51

Well, shoes in America. Yeah, they do all that. But right now, your friend is trying to drag all the industries to go to America.

M

Mo Ibrahim32:01

Okay. We'll not talk about that now.

Right. I mean, that's very interesting. Let us move also to agriculture. I hope it registered. And that's a very important area because first, we are not really using all the lands we have. We have huge amount of arable land which has not been used. 60% of the world's arable land, and we are not using that. Then even the land you are using has the lowest productivity in the world. And there is a huge upside there if you improve that productivity. So this is an area we need to look at very carefully. We've changed that though. More before you go onto your next point. You know, the rice before in Nigeria, we used to do only one crop per annum. Now we do two crops. And they used to get about 1 to 2 tons per hectare. Now we have varieties that we imported that are giving us up to 8 tons per hectare. So once you have this, it will help the farmers. It will help a lot of people to realize that farming is not a farmer's business. It can actually get rich faster in farming than doing something else. I mean, you look at it, today we also have fertilizer which we used to import a lot. This fertilizer, we have laboratories that will go and test your soil and give you what kind of fertilizer you need. Whereas right now, as today, people use the same fertilizer for maize, for rice, for sugar. So they don't actually differentiate including the type of soil that you have.

So this is best practice. Why don't you produce a case study or something useful? You've been through that and let other African countries appreciate how to do it. Because we need to replicate what you have done there in other countries as well. Or you plan to do it all by yourself?

A

Aliko Dangote34:11

No, no, no.

M

Mo Ibrahim34:12

Okay. So you're going to allow others. So why don't you really let people know here is how to do it?

A

Aliko Dangote34:20

Well, that is one of the reasons why when you look at it, I do travel very often to various areas where I can give a talk, sometimes inside Nigeria, sometimes outside Nigeria, just to tell them that look, all this thing is a myth. Nothing is impossible. We can really make it happen. We as Africans can actually... The issue is that first of all, we have to understand that in all the countries in the world, whether it's South Korea, Japan, US, those economies were actually built up by their own indigenous people. So if we don't lead in Africa...

M

Mo Ibrahim35:01

Agriculture was the basis of many of these countries.

A

Aliko Dangote35:04

Agriculture was the basis of development of many countries.

M

Mo Ibrahim35:06

Yeah, many of these countries.

A

Aliko Dangote35:08

It is not backward as people think.

M

Mo Ibrahim35:09

No, it's not backward. Because of time, let us move on to a little bit different subject to talk about you as a person. You made a lot of money now, but I guess it doesn't matter now because for you it is numbers in the bank. You look at your bank statement and you know how many zeros here or there. But when you made your first million or $5 million, how did you deal with that? When you first made your first million or $5 million...

A

Aliko Dangote35:46

The way it is, when you first start business, your target is to make your first million. Okay, fine, I did that. But after a year or so, I realized that I have much more than $12 or $13 billion. And I say okay fine, all these numbers are just written numbers. And one day I went to a bank. At that time there were no restrictions on business. I wrote a check and cashed $10 million and I took it home.

M

Mo Ibrahim36:20

For yourself?

A

Aliko Dangote36:21

For myself? Yes. I cashed $10 million from the bank.

M

Mo Ibrahim36:25

Yes. And took it...

A

Aliko Dangote36:26

I put it in the boot of my vehicle and I went home and I opened it and I looked at $10 million and said okay fine, now I believe I have money.

M

Mo Ibrahim36:40

I know. I know.

So you put this in the bed and you slept all night on top of it?

A

Aliko Dangote36:46

You made love to your money.

M

Mo Ibrahim36:48

It was in the boot of my car, but I brought it and I went there by myself. I drove myself to the bank. I cashed the money and I put it in my room and I looked at the money and I took it back to the bank the next day.

Can I ask you how much money you have in your wallet today?

A

Aliko Dangote37:08

Today?

M

Mo Ibrahim37:08

Yeah. How much money you have in your pocket?

A

Aliko Dangote37:10

You'll be very surprised. I don't even have not even a dollar. Nothing.

M

Mo Ibrahim37:15

You have no money on you.

A

Aliko Dangote37:16

Nothing.

M

Mo Ibrahim37:18

Nothing. I have nothing.

A

Aliko Dangote37:20

That's money for you guys. When you have money, you don't carry money.

M

Mo Ibrahim37:25

That's really interesting.

I know you also started a foundation.

A

Aliko Dangote37:36

Yes.

M

Mo Ibrahim37:36

And what is the focus of your foundation?

A

Aliko Dangote37:39

I think the focus of our foundation is health, education, empowerment, and disaster relief. So we do quite a lot. Two years ago we did an endowment of $1.25 billion.

M

Mo Ibrahim37:57

$1.25 billion.

A

Aliko Dangote37:59

Billion.

M

Mo Ibrahim38:00

Yeah. Dollars. Yes.

A

Aliko Dangote38:00

You made an endowment of the foundation of $1 billion.

M

Mo Ibrahim38:04

Yes.

A

Aliko Dangote38:04

That's investing. Okay. But the foundation is not a new foundation. It's very old. I started the foundation in 1993.

M

Mo Ibrahim38:13

Who manages this foundation?

A

Aliko Dangote38:15

It's a lady called Zora. She's somewhere here. She's doing a great job. That's her.

M

Mo Ibrahim38:24

You're going to have a queue of people asking you for grants now. You better run away now.

Now let me ask you another personal question if you don't mind. You must be the most eligible bachelor in Nigeria.

A

Aliko Dangote38:42

Oh Mo, you've started again.

M

Mo Ibrahim38:43

Yeah, I mean you are nice, you are handsome, you are slim, and you're the richest man in Nigeria. You're always courteous. And I imagine there's a whole huge queue of young women outside your office every morning. Hi, Aliko. You know what's going to happen? I mean, you...

A

Aliko Dangote39:10

Well, Mo, of course, yes, it is natural. But I will now tell all those ladies to go and apply through my brother who is my consultant and he will help me vet which one I should marry.

M

Mo Ibrahim39:27

Who's that consultant?

A

Aliko Dangote39:28

That's Mo Ibrahim.

M

Mo Ibrahim39:29

Oh, that's me.

This guy is... you know, I was telling somebody, you're going to receive 100,000 letters for CVs from Nigerian women.

A

Aliko Dangote39:48

I saw somebody that I have a one-on-one with Mo. He said I went... I said no in about 3 hours. Oh my god. He said that Mo is actually harder than hard talk. I said really? He said yes, it's better you go and face hard talk than facing Mo. I said no, don't worry, he is my brother. He behaves like me.

M

Mo Ibrahim40:06

No, no, no. I think we have been very kind to him today. Yes. We do not help. No. Thank you very much, Aliko. Please give me a hand. And we are running out of time. We're going to allow two questions.

A

Aliko Dangote40:24

But you know Mo, I have a harder person. I thought I was very hard. But yes, I have somebody in the family. Very hard. My daughter is here. Halima. She's very...

M

Mo Ibrahim40:32

Oh, Halima is a character. Yes.

A

Aliko Dangote40:36

That's how she's hiding. She doesn't want people to see her.

M

Mo Ibrahim40:38

Yeah. Halima is a businesswoman and she's building her own space now.

A

Aliko Dangote40:46

Yes, this is wonderful.

M

Mo Ibrahim40:47

She was with us at dinner last night actually when we were late. I'm going to allow only two questions because we run out of time. But I really need interesting serious questions, not application for marriage.

Okay, somebody over there. Yes, go ahead.

V

Valani Bweni41:15

Good afternoon Aliko and Baba Aliko. My name is Valani Bweni. I'm a South African entrepreneur from Cape Town focusing in technology and transportation. Now I believe that Aliko started his business at 21 years old. If you were a 21-year-old entrepreneur today, what three sectors would you focus on creating a business in? And what three factors would you believe will make you succeed? Thank you very much.

A

Aliko Dangote41:41

Well, thank you. I think the most sectors to focus on are either ICT or agriculture. These are the two promising ones you need to focus on. But I see a lot of people, even the younger ones, we need to be also very careful because one of the biggest issues with us Africans is that we spend our projected incomes. Once you start doing business and it starts doing well, rather than for you to keep reinvesting into the business, you start spending money and thinking that that profit will continue to come. There are ups and downs in business. So you need to be very focused and see okay fine what do you do and how do you do those things.

M

Mo Ibrahim42:31

So you're not supposed to buy a Porsche car or...

A

Aliko Dangote42:33

No, you're not supposed to do that. Because those luxury things also take up your time which will not make you focus on your business. It's like what I mean, I don't have any holiday home anywhere. I don't have a house anywhere. But I know people who are working for me, they have a house in London, but I don't.

M

Mo Ibrahim42:55

Interesting. That's why we have to put you up every time we see you. Yes. But it's okay. One more question. That was a good question. The last one. Try to get me a better question.

I cannot see in the dark, please. Okay. Go ahead.

N

Nikki Wako43:17

Hi, my name is Nikki Wako. I'm from South Sudan. Live and work in Belgium. I had a question about the continental free trade agreement that's being shoved around. I understand that a couple of countries have had issues ratifying it because they were concerned about the private sector. And as a key member of the private sector, I would like to know, are you truly concerned about the impact of the free trade agreement on the industry in Nigeria? And secondly, the infant industry protection in the agreement. Do you think that would be a challenging or would that be a root cause for why Benin for example is not allowing your products in the region?

M

Mo Ibrahim43:57

I think you answer that question.

A

Aliko Dangote43:58

Well, I've answered that question. But you see, let me also...

M

Mo Ibrahim44:02

If you answer that question, let's allow another question.

A

Aliko Dangote44:04

No, she asked...

M

Mo Ibrahim44:05

Because you said it's not working.

A

Aliko Dangote44:07

It's not working. So what more you want to say? No, what she said was ask think about the industry, right? Am I right?

N

Nikki Wako44:17

Yeah.

A

Aliko Dangote44:18

Well, the issue is that if we implement it to the letter, then it's okay. For example, South Africa, they sign, but they said that it has to have 80% local content. If it's 80% local content, I want you to count 20 things in the entire Africa where we produce with 80% local content. Because the biggest issue we have is a structural problem in terms of industrialization in Africa. Most of the factories that we have in Africa are just assembly plants.

M

Mo Ibrahim44:54

Assembly. Yes.

A

Aliko Dangote44:55

Okay. So they don't really process local raw material to this, like us. Now if you look at it, before, cement was imported. Now we produce almost every single thing in Nigeria with the exception of what we don't have enough, which is gypsum. Gypsum is only 3%. That's really peanuts, nothing. It's very cheap. It doesn't even...

M

Mo Ibrahim45:21

But do you think that 80% is a high bar?

A

Aliko Dangote45:24

I think we have to really protect our region. Because, I'm sorry to say this, a lot of people who are pushing for this CFTA are just looking at some of the weaker countries to go through and push their products into Africa. So if we are going to... I don't mind even if it's 70%, we can start. Even 80% that South Africa said, I think it's too high. But we can even go down to 70. The biggest challenge is the implementation. Because today, if Republic of Benin is not allowing me to take cement in which is 28 kilometers away, how can somebody from Côte d'Ivoire be able to send their goods by road to Nigeria? It's only 1,000 kilometers, but it will be very difficult because he will have problems with Republic of Benin allowing to enter.

M

Mo Ibrahim46:22

Okay, I think we need to ask that question to our friends in Côte d'Ivoire here. Maybe ask the president. We're going to see the president in 1 hour.

A

Aliko Dangote46:31

Yeah. No, ask him.

M

Mo Ibrahim46:32

Yeah, we can ask him. But I think how they going to manage to...

A

Aliko Dangote46:35

You see, because it will help quite a lot when we have this in between all the countries. Where people now, for example, in Côte d'Ivoire, everybody wants to come now and...

M

Mo Ibrahim46:44

So the let us summarize here. The message from business really is that please be real. Our political leaders, you sign agreements about free trade among African countries, please do it, implement what you signed.

A

Aliko Dangote47:03

They have to do it more. Because it's just like today, Mo, every day you invite me for dinner and I will call on you, you give me dinner. Both of us are doing business of similarities and we are not doing any business. It is only a matter of time that we believe that we are wasting my time and I'm also wasting my time. So for countries to strengthen those relationships, we have to have an economic relationship.

M

Mo Ibrahim47:32

Economic integration is useful. Yeah.

A

Aliko Dangote47:34

That's right. So the integration really is useful. We shouldn't be complaining that we have a lot of youth. We have to be very careful. We've seen this in North Africa. The time bomb that we have is this youth that don't have jobs.

M

Mo Ibrahim47:48

Okay. With this note on integration, I have to end this because we are running out of time. Please give a hand to a brave man.

H

Host47:59

Listening to this conversation, it is incredible to realize that although this interview took place seven years ago, every single word spoken by Aliko Dangote remains undeniably relevant to the challenges we face today. It shows true visionary leadership. Back then, that massive oil refinery outside Lagos was still a challenging dream on marshy land. Today, it stands as a symbol of African capability, proving that what seemed impossible can be achieved right here on our soil. But while Dangote's industrial projects have moved forward, our political landscape has been slow to catch up. The profound gap he highlighted seven years ago between the trade agreements signed by our political leaders and the daily reality of moving goods and people across borders remains a massive hurdle. Africa cannot rise to its full potential if we continue to lock each other out while leaving our doors wide open to the rest of the world. We want to hear directly from you, our global African family. Your voice is vital to this movement. We want you to weigh in on these critical issues. So, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below on these two crucial questions. Question one: Looking back at Dangote's experience 7 years ago with cross-border trade barriers such as his cement being blocked just 28 kilometers away in Benin while overseas imports were accepted, do you feel our regional trade bodies have made real progress since this interview or are African entrepreneurs still fighting the exact same systemic corruption and red tape? Question two: Dangote firmly asserted that ICT and agriculture are the two most promising sectors to create wealth and millions of jobs for African youth. Given how the continent has evolved over the last 7 years, do you still agree with this blueprint? Or is there another industry you believe is now the true key to Africa's future? Let us know what you think. Don't forget to copy the link to this video and share it on your WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook groups right now to keep this vital conversation alive. Thank you for watching. Stay united and see you in the comments.

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About Aliko Dangote