There's two men in the front of the class here who are very excited I think because of our first...
This is a shareholders meeting.
Oh. This is the initial shareholders meeting before the one in the stadium.
Listen guys, thank you so much for being here this morning. We have a packed day for you. Great conversations ahead. We are talking digital today, sports, fashion of course. We had an extraordinary...
We talked about ownership, turning mineral wealth into industry, connecting businesses with capital. We talked about expanding growth and powering that. And today we're taking those questions into Africa's digital future, creative industries and even sports.
Yeah, and who will build and own the technology? Who will finance the next African screen story? How do our designers and athletes keep more of the value their talent creates? Those are some of the questions ahead. Don't forget we've got some dynamic sessions also happening on the seventh floor. You have to go and check those out at some point during the day.
Remember we have two floors, the sixth and the seventh floors.
Come on. Should I do it? Six, seven. Okay, sorry. Anyway, we will also see Gabby's work take national shape with the South African Business Initiative for Impact or SABI that's getting launched today.
Indeed. And the Global Africa Business Initiative as you know works throughout the year bringing African and international businesses together with policy makers to co-create and implement practical solutions that help businesses and markets grow. Its convening, the action pathways and national initiatives carry that work well beyond these two days in New York throughout the year on the African continent of course.
Absolutely. And I need to remind you that throughout the day we have the most exciting things happening here with the sessions here on the seventh floor and we will all cap it off one more time with a big what we call the diamond session at the end of today.
You don't want to miss it because we've got some great surprises.
Some great surprises and we will end and celebrate this five years of Gabby in a special way and unstoppable Africa as we look forward to the next five, the next 10, the next 50.
Indeed, many more years to come, right?
Yeah, yeah, let's begin. Just a quick housekeeping note. Interpretation is available in French and in English. If you need a headset, check the team backstage and they'll provide you one. Unstoppable Africa TV is also here today. Melissa Matani conducting interviews and talking to our audience online and the watch parties in...
We have watch parties in Lagos and Nairobi that are joining us. They're contributing on the YouTube page, Unstoppable Africa TV, which is why if you have a chance to ask a question and there will be a chance to ask a question in this morning session, please wait until the microphone gets to you so that everyone can hear you and maybe you'll also get to hear from Melissa Matani and Unstoppable Africa TV over there.
Yeah, and don't forget on all your posts, all your pictures, hashtag Unstoppable Africa 2026, hashtag Gabby, of course. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Please a round of applause. We're going to start now. Let's begin. Let's get started. Thank you so much. Now, building at scale, of course, means committing long before the conditions are perfect. When power is unreliable, logistics are difficult, and the return on investment may be years away. Our first guest has spent decades making those decisions. This morning, we'll explore what keeps him investing, what he's learned about building through uncertainty, and what it will take for more African companies to grow at scale. Please join me in welcoming to the stage Alhaji Aliko Dangote, president and chief executive officer of the Dangote Group.
Alhaji, thank you so much. Please, it's a pleasure, always a pleasure to talk to you on the Unstoppable Africa stage. You've been a good friend to Gabby for many years now. I want to start off with a question to the audience. How many young Dangotes in the room? Yes. This is a shareholders meeting. Yeah?
It's supposed to be a shareholders meeting.
Yeah, so be prepared. Be prepared. We're discussing boardroom matters this morning. You have spent decades building at scale, sugar, cement, the Lagos refinery, a mega refinery in the works in East Africa, and this month, on September the 14th, the largest IPO on the African continent, Africa's largest industrial project went public. Why now, and what does this moment mean to you?
Well, thank you very much. It's great to be with all of you. I think this moment means quite a lot, and you asked a question, why now? Of course, why now? We wanted to de-risk the project itself. You know, when you hear 700,000 barrels refinery, you know, it's easier said than done. It's easier that you ask the question. And this refinery we're talking about, you're talking about a refinery that has never ever been built before in the world, not in Africa by anybody. The largest single train that was built by mainly the multinationals like Saudi Aramco and Co. is 450,000 barrels per day refinery. And when we put up 340 engineers in India, 76 engineers in Chicago to challenge the license, which is Honeywell. They have a company UOP, you know, part of Honeywell. They did not believe that anybody could do that. So, and even in their own write-up what they said that no, we're only guaranteeing 460,000. But to cut the story short, today we're at 700. We'll be running at 700. We couldn't get even any contractor because the mafia in the industry must have spoken to everybody not to accept to do EPC for us. So, we never knew anything about refinery, but we set up a team and we said we will do it. It will happen. Nobody believed in what we said, but eventually we built it. We built the petrochemical. It's been running at the lowest cost ever.
And at full capacity now.
Yes, we must list it on the shores of Africa to make it an African company. So, we have listed, we're listing now in Nigeria. We launched it. There are a couple of challenges like what I said earlier on. When we started, we launched it on Monday, the entire system of the apps, everything collapsed because the avalanche of people rushing to buy the shares.
There was a lot of excitement. I got phone calls from Guinea all the way to Sydney. Everybody wants to buy Dangote shares. So, how are you going to make it more... Are they going to be more available soon? And...
Well, yes. I think what we are saying that any of these smaller people that actually applied, maybe big corporations that will apply 100 million or something, those ones won't be able to satisfy their needs, but smaller people will definitely have whatever they demand. We will give it to them.
Okay. Alhaji, let me ask you about the mega refinery projects in East Africa now. You said once that you would never build another refinery after you went through what you went through with Lagos, right?
With you. Now you're planning this 15 billion dollar refinery in East Africa, which in Kenya, which has no commercial crude production, by the way. So, it's a big challenge. What made you change your mind about, you know, building another...
You know, let me go back a little bit. It's true. I know that I told you, I think it was you that I had an interview in my house in Lagos, and I told you that no, I think I never knew what I was getting into. I even said that if I have any bad prayer for my enemy is to pray for that my enemy to go and start building a refinery. So, now I think that fear has actually gone. And I realized that, you know, I sat down and said, 'Okay, fine. I want to really ask myself a question. Why? Why is it that we in Africa we have not been able to develop? We've been talking about potentials, potentials, potential. One reason that we have not been able to develop like Asia, for example. You remember when they had the Asian tigers. Because the Asians believed in their own economy. So, they are the ones that made their own economy. Even here in the US, only Americans will start investing, then later on they'll be joined by other people. We are doing it the reverse. Well, we will take our own money to their banks, strengthen their banks, and we don't really keep our money in our own continent.' So, I said, 'No, we must industrialize our continent.' So, the whole thing now has changed, where we alone in Dangote we said that, 'Look, you know what? We want to lead and champion the industrialization of Africa.'
So, is the Kenya refinery a bet on African integration then?
No, it is now part of our Vision 2030. One is to double the refinery in Nigeria to 1.4 million barrels, triple almost the polypropylene, which is petrochemical, create another lab, you know, which is linear alkyl benzene, raw material for making detergent. And we had 46 in our numbers, we had between 46 and 50 billion dollars to invest. But, when you look at East Africa, the entire continent, I mean that side of the continent, they're all importing. Even though 54 countries in Africa, they're all importing. Nobody's producing. It's true. East Africa doesn't have... you know, somebody asked me the other year, 'No, but why are you going to East Africa to build a refinery?' I said that, 'Yes, but you know, there are so many refineries in Singapore. Do you know that Singapore has a lot of refineries?' And they're way, way off there in Asia, in India.
But do you think Aliko that the AfCFTA, the Africa Free Trade Continental Area, is ready for that scale of ambition that you're describing there?
Well, they are ready, you know, I think you see right now a lot of people they want to invest in Africa, but they are looking for scale and also who is doing that investment. They are ready. I mean, people are ready, they are willing, they want to go and invest, you know, money in, you know, in the continent. But they don't know how and where. So, when you build something at scale like the refinery that we have, we are doing very, very well. Somebody asked me yesterday, 'Oh, Africa was so lucky. If not because of this refinery during this humous crisis, they would have been in trouble.' I said, 'No, Europe is lucky because we are supplying most of their jet fuel.' You know, so you can see now Africa supplying Europe. That's a very big change.
It is a very big change and the geopolitical context has no doubt...
But it will continue to happen, you know, because all this bauxite, all this iron ore, all this copper will add value. We will make a lot of money, then we will send them finished product rather than sending raw material.
Okay. So, what advice, Aliko, would you give to an African industrialist trying to get, let's say, a mega plant at full scale today? You went through a lot of challenges over the years. What is the one piece of advice you would give?
Well, one piece of advice, I'll come back to the project in Kenya. I haven't forgotten. So, one piece of advice that I have to give to the African entrepreneurs is for us to first of all believe in our continent. For us to be very focused. For us to make sure that, yes, things don't... I mean they are not that easy, but once you start, okay, then you will start making it easier. But, if you don't start, the more you don't do anything, it continues to be much more difficult. There's nowhere on earth that you go now and you have a free lunch. They say that there's no free lunch. So, wherever you go now to invest, you want to go to US, you have problems, demands by regulators, demands by whatever. So, in Africa, too, is the same case. But, I think we all speak different dialects, but same language. Same language in sense that we understand ourselves. I don't understand Swahili, but if you are talking to me, I will understand what you are trying to say. So, going back to Lamu, it's true. We are actually launching that project on the 30th of this month. We are spending 16 billion dollars, you know, in that project, and it will be ready within the next 3 years.
Okay. Now, looking ahead, Al-Haji, would you say, or looking back, I should say, was the refinery the hardest thing you ever built? Or is there something ahead of you right now that scares you even more than that experience?
No, I think the refinery really was the hardest. I must admit it was the most challenging period of my life. It was something that...
Differently, what would it be?
Well, right now, if I have to do something differently, I would do it totally in a different way because right now we are a different company altogether. So, those challenges that we've had when we were building the refinery, they don't exist anymore. So, what am I going to do right now? So, I mean, I was telling somebody, you know, today as we speak, we just have to keep encouraging other African entrepreneurs to be investing in our own continent. That yes, it will happen. We have escaped the bar. They've set up a bar for us not to go across, but we have escaped. We're on the other side now. So, since we're on the other side now, we'll try and have advice to some of the serious African investors of how to come and jump and meet us on the other side.
