Aliko Dangote Speaks on Dangote Refinery IPO, Power & Africa’s Economy

Thank you very much, Nicolai. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Well, I started as a trading company in 1978.

Cement. At that time, I started first with cement. I was getting four, five trucks and trading them there in Lagos. And then later on, I got into fish, into rice, into sugar. And you know, we started, we continued to expand. My first import of sugar was actually in 1980. Wow. You know, and everything was under import license, so I got a license.

Several generations. Your grand your grand grand... My great grand... you know, this if you from the maternal side. Uh, my mom's grandfather, they call him Al Hassan Dantata. He was actually even trading, you know, Nigeria, Ghana, you know, and he died in 1955 before I was born. But he was the richest West African at that time, during his time. And of course, my own late grandfather, Sanusi Dantata, he was actually the richest Nigerian, too, at some point.

I grew up with my grandfather, because my father died when I was just about 8 years old. Mhm. You know, so, but I never...

Who taught how to trade, he sent me to school and this. But then, actually, I never ever grew with my father. I've never stayed with my father. You know, because when I was born, I was the first grandson. I know in our tradition, grand first grandchild will now go and stay with grand parents. All right. So, my sister, my little sister happened to be the first grandchild. So, they took her away. And then, the next was me, a boy. So, they also took me away. So, both me and my sister, we grew up with my own grandparents. Wow. Yes.

The key, first of all, it's actually discipline. You have to be very, very disciplined. You have to know what trading is. Not that you'll be jack of all trades, no. You must choose what do you really want to do for your life. And then, you pick up and concentrate on that. And then, pleasure and business, they don't mix at all. And that is the kind of discipline that I got. My grandfather used to start working from 6:00 in the morning. Mhm. And he work till late. Had a very simple life. Some days, he drive himself. That is how simple that he was. Very disciplined, honest person. I actually took a lot of things from him.

First of all, to be very honest. To make sure that you are fair to everybody. To be also generous. He was very generous. To tell you how generous he was, he gave out all his assets and money before he passed. Wow. And then also in terms of business, he has always been very, very, very, very fair.

I love what I do. So, when you look at the business for example today, right? Why is it that people see that I work so hard? Do you know why? Because my business is actually my hobby. I take my business as hobby because if I take it as a job, I won't work this hard.

I work... Let me give you an example. I go to bed maybe sometimes 11:00, 12:00. But I wake up around 5:00 in the morning. I go to the gym. By 7:30, 8:00 I'm done. Then I go to my office. And I work as hard as any staff.

I'm close to 70, yes. I'm 69. I turned 69 just a month ago. Actually, less than about 3 weeks ago I turned to 69. But I think that discipline is good because I don't want to... Let me tell you something, you know, Nicolai. For example, when I decided to go into industry, you know what I did? I sold all my properties in the US. I had two houses in the US. Big mansions. And I had a house in UK. And I wanted to really sit in Nigeria and concentrate. Why? You know, sometimes when you own a house, a holiday home, anywhere, you have to create that time to go and use that property. So, now my life is very simple. Wherever I go, I use hotels. I pay. When I leave, nobody will call me and say I have a burst pipe or something is wrong. So I'm committed to what I do and I just don't do things off here. I always create a vision. It's just like now we created a vision 2030. So that I know I have a target to meet. I just don't do business on a normal this is no no no. All my businesses they are targeted.

Well, I first of all look at what do we need as people? What is it that we're supposed to be producing and we're importing? So we do what you call a backward integration which means what we are importing now we produce it. We will produce what we need and we are now producing things that when you wake up as a human being every morning you must use part of what we produce. So that's like cement, sugar.

I exited that yes because of the foreign exchange challenges. That's why we left the flour you know meal. But today we are very, very good in terms of exports. If you look at it now part of what we are announcing is that when you invest in any of our business going forward in the cement for example in the refinery, in the petrochemical, in the fertilizer, in the port we guarantee to pay you dividend in dollars. Because we're very well into exports. 80% of our revenue will be in dollars. So that's why we're announcing that look yes you can have a choice if you want for locals, we can pay you in Naira. If you don't want Naira, you don't... We want to de-risk. You know, because most foreign investors sometimes, when they invest in a company, what actually matters to them is that when they get their dividend, it's difficult to also get money to buy and remit your money. But we have addressed that issue. We are saying, 'Look, invest.' And you generally reinvest the money back into the business. Oh, all our businesses... Because if you look at Dangote Industries right from inception to date, we have never ever paid any dividend. If we are going to get dividend, we only get it from companies that we listed. But companies that are wholly owned by Dangote Industries, which they are not listed, we'll never ever take a dime out of the company.

Actually, major decision is to now go into cement in trying to save a lot of African countries because they are struggling. Cement was selling for $250 a ton in countries like Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville. In Nigeria, you have to pay and wait for 3 months. So, we realized that, 'Look, people who are in cement, they are not really serious about making cement available.' So, we now came in and we have now invested heavily. And you're in 14 countries in cement? 14 countries. Now again, when you look at oil, in Africa, we have a lot of countries that they produce oil, but they don't refine. So, they export the crude oil and now they import the products. And importation costs a lot of money. It actually goes deep into our own reserves. So, when I look at Nigeria for example today, I say, 'Okay, fine. But, we've been having fuel queues for 52 years.' Sometimes, people used to stay at fuel during Christmas. You might have to go and queue for 2 days trying to buy fuel for a country that produces oil. And we have tried government refineries. They're all destroyed. They were not really doing well. So, we said, 'Okay, fine. Let me take this bold decision.' So, then you decide, 'I'll make a refinery.' I decided that I'm going to make a refinery.

In the world, ever in the world. 50% more than the biggest. $20 billion of investment.

So, we started with that. We launched the project in 2013. We have had issues of the land for 5 years. One land, 3 and 1/2 years. The other land, 1 and 1/2 years that we have not been able to get even access to it. All these we've been blocked by what you call the mafia in oil business to make sure that we don't come and address these issues. But, we were not deterred at all. We were actually focused. We knew what we were doing. And, Nicolai, when we started, right? The exchange rate of naira was 156. We even got up to 1,900. But, we still went ahead. We had to build our port because there was no port in the country that could take those heavy equipment. One piece was 3,000 tons. We have another which is the regenerator. Then, we have another piece which is the crude distillation unit. That is 2,700 tons. So, we have almost about 30 of these equipment. And we build the refinery importing most of these preheaters and core in modular forms. So, you have to build a harbor, you have to build roads. We have to do water. Water is 440 million liters of water, you know, which is treated water. So, our water department alone is more than... let me say in hectare in size is more than 30 hectares.

67,000 people worked on the building of the refinery and it took us... This is the size of the town where I grew up. Well, you know, but I mean, that is how we had to actually now because we are building something. And luckily, let me tell you what you don't know. Luckily for us, we didn't know what we are building. Because if you knew... I was faced with the plan and the drawings all at once, right? I wouldn't have built this refinery. I would have actually chicken out. Really? Yes, because I mean, you know, when we started, you know, it's like you started swimming across the ocean. When you get middle of the ocean, you realize that the tide was bad. When you go forward, it's bad. When you go backwards, it's... So, you have to walk forward. And that's what we did. We had to just keep working and working and believing that we will deliver.

We got a lot of support. You know, first of all, we were actually meant to fund most of these from our internally generated funds. But because of the devaluation, so we had to now rely on Africa... Africa Zim Bank, African Finance Corporation, Zenith Bank, Access Bank, UBA and couple of some of the local bank. But of course, we also have a very good relationship with the Standard Bank of South Africa and at the beginning Standard Chartered Bank of UK. We were very, very, very, very lucky and what happened when we finish the refinery things now have turned out to be much more than our own expectations.

Well, actually all your businesses. What the effect on our businesses is actually more of beneficiary than actually downside because if you look at urea where we are producers. Which is the fertilizer. Today fertilizer is in the very high demand. Not only in the high demand, in February before the Middle Eastern crisis we were selling a ton for about $400. Today we are selling a ton of fertilizer for $850. And we are actually oversold. In plastics, polypropylene, it has moved from $900 in UK today it's about $3,000. Okay, and for us if not because of the polypropylene we are producing today all the plastic industry in Nigeria which they are very huge, they are almost like number two or number three in terms of employment, they would have shut down because there's no way you can even get it. Our aviation we are oversold to end of you know, till middle of July. You know, and we are producing 20 million liters a day.

We source about 56% from Nigeria, some from other Angola. We buy quite from Angola. We buy from Libya. We buy from US. At a point, we are doing almost about 78 cargoes of WTI from US. But, we are getting more of Nigeria's crude now. So, you know, we have to buy now 21 cargoes every month. That's how big we are. And, you know, we are more than doubling the refinery, you know, in the next 30 months, we'll be at 1.4 million, which is huge.

Well, the people who are actually benefiting because Nigeria was given almost about $10 billion every year as subsidy. So, there are shippers who are making tons of money. There are traders who are making tons of money buying the crude and sending us product. They use it, they say that it's a trade which they give you crude and then you supply them with products. There are also the local people because it was subsidized. So, a lot of people, very few people are getting allocation, so they are making tons of billions of naira. So, these are the people that are not agreeing for us to such them because they believe that no, we are coming here to displace them, which is, I mean, that's of course, that's what we have done now. Absolutely.

Tanzania, there are couple of countries that they say, 'Okay, look, with what has happened in the Middle East, we don't want to rely on the supply anymore from there. We need our own refinery. So, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and some of the other countries like Rwanda and co. When we build the refinery the same size, 650, we'll be able to serve up to Ethiopia.

Yeah, we're going to build.

We have now the group as a group wide wealth $45 billion to spend. But, you know, we're also doing LNG in Nigeria. We're doing a gas infrastructure to remove all the gas we are flaring in the southern part and eastern part, bringing it to the west where we are setting off an LNG plant. About 12 million tons of LNG. Each train will be about 6 million.

We're piping from there down, and then we have the gas treatment plant. You know, the Nigerian gas is an associated gas. So, you have to treat it before you can now use it to regasify. You know, so, what we are trying now to do is to make sure that, yes, we look at our income. What is our income stream? What is our revenue? And what is the EBITDA that we have in between 2026 to 2030? What is the gap that we have? What is the another insurance gap that we need to fill? And this is what we have done. That's why we are coming off with selling part of the business, getting more investors into the business, and also making sure that we continue to accelerate on the business. Cement going to 100 million tons. In cement, really, we don't even need much money. We are getting financing, and the cash generation is very liquid, it's heavy. So, we'll be able to actually fund this $45 billion, which will eventually take us to $100 billion of revenue. Because our target is to get to $100 billion by 2030. And with a market valuation of maybe more than $200 to $250 billion. Because as we speak today, last year our EBITDA was $3 billion. But the target by 2030 is to be 10 times that amount. It's to be at over $30 billion of EBITDA.

What is the difference between thinking big? Because if you think big, you grow big. When you think small, you don't grow at all. So, you have to first of all know that the business you are going in is a business that you know in and out. It's like myself and any of the staff, 10 of the top most staff, when you work them late at night, they will tell you the process of each and every part of our business. So, we don't think small, because first of all, we know that the market we are operating that's big gap.

No, we don't overstretch because we make sure that whatever that we do are on in terms of funding, we can fund it with no sweat. We have a lot of financial institutions that they believe in us and they are ready to go ahead and back us financially to be able to deliver. That's number one. Number two, they know that we have history of delivery of projects. So, since we have history of delivery of project, they know that yes, their money is not going to be at risk. We have delivered a refinery that has never ever been built with petrochemicals. And we manage 67,000 workers at site. We built during the most difficult times, which is COVID. We built in a very difficult environment, which is Nigeria, and we were able to deliver. When we delivered, did we really commission? Did this thing really work? Very well. The answer is yes. The refinery has been tested. We have now processed even crude at 661,000 barrels per day. So, we have demonstrated that capability. Well, now a lot of financial institutions are saying that yes, if it is Dangote you are doing this project, we are there to back you because we know that you can deliver. You have the capacity and you have the knowledge and you have the experience.

Wow. Well, the biggest risk for us is actually if there are civil war, which is not... I mean, it's not in the offing at all. The other biggest risk is government inconsistencies in policies, of which we're addressing that one because if you look at like our refinery, the national oil company already owns 7.25% and they are trying to buy more. We are the ones that say that no, we want to now spread it and have everybody to be part of. So, these are the two biggest risks that we have. The other one was to do with infrastructure. But, what we are doing also, equal to tell you, the infrastructure we are working with government. You know what we are doing today. We have roads, which they are more than $3 billion, which we are building. So, the issue is that because our taxes our companies are doing well, so the taxes are high.

Well, yes. So, now what you are doing is that we are building roads. When we build the infrastructure as roads, there's a government policy where they allow us to defray what we have invested in the roads over a period of 3 years. First year, we take 50%. Second year, 25%. Third year, 25. So, we don't really wait for government to give us that infrastructure. We are now building the infrastructure to be able to absorb the kind of businesses that we are doing. And not only for us, for the other investors in Nigeria.

Well, we are not depending really on the government. No, because if you look at it, it's like anywhere in the world today, people who are operating in America, for example, tomorrow morning, if Mr. Trump wakes up from the wrong side of the bed, he can bring a regulation that can either help them or try to slow them down, which I think today, those things are changing. Even Africa, because the governments, they believe that the only way for them to create jobs, to create employment is through the private sector, because the government is already full to capacity. They don't have the resources to do that, but depending on the private sector, where now you give very good investment policies, right? Giving those good investment policies, it means that it has made the governments to be partners. How are they partners? You know, today, if I run the business, even if I when I don't make money, I've generated a revenue where the government will collect VAT. And they collected minimum taxation. So, government in some of these like our cement business, I keep telling people that government is making more money than us. Because of the various taxes that we pay. But we're happy because we're also growing. So, we're okay with that. You know, we want to also behave and be a good socially responsible company. And that's what we are. So, it is a partnership where government will now give very good investment policies, good regulation, and making sure that yes, we also don't abuse the system. Which we don't.

What they don't really understand, there's one thing that I really that is baffling them that okay, fine, if we... Well, what you're saying is good, how come we Africans are not investing in our own economies? Because the mistakes that we'll be making in the past is that we're looking for foreign investors. But foreign investors are only attracted by domestic investors. So, and that's what we are doing today, Nicolai. Because if you look at it, we're investing heavily. I mean, we don't even take money out of the business. So, majority of companies today... I can just mention a few like Adnoc. We're in a very big discussion with them and we want to have a very serious partnership in fertilizer, in the oil business, and in any other businesses like infrastructure. People are looking at infrastructure. That's why we're building the biggest, deepest port in Africa in just about 60 km away from Lagos. So, these are the sort of things that we're doing, which I believe now the government also themselves, they realize that look, for me to deliver on my electorate promises, I have to work with the private sector. So, that has actually given us an insurance because if the government disrupts any of our business, they'll be the first ones to suffer before us.

It's not really very difficult because it depends on what kind of culture you try to create in your own organization. Right. If you have a very solid organization, you have very good culturally trained staff, it's as good as being operating anywhere in the world. So, I mean, there's actually no issues about that at all. You know, like what I told you, we just don't go and pick up people from the street and employ them. No. We have an academy. We have graduate training. These are people that we employ the best of the best in universities and we put them through what you call graduate training. And once they are, you know, this we will we have always been giving them a choice, to be fair, because we are the big corporation in the country or even in the continent. We are saying that, 'Look, if you are happy, stay with us. You have a guaranteed job. But after you are training, you might as well, even if you have a better offer from Shell or any other company, you can go there. So, we are actually contributing to the national development of the country. And now we are in 14 African countries. What we always do also is to go to these 14 African countries and bring them in to train them. We have also what you have what you call young global leaders, which we have now trained over 200 Africans. And it cost us a lot of money because it's in partnership with Davos, with the World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum, they are doing this thing for Africans. They are giving Africans only five slots. So, I said, 'No, increase it to 25 to 30, and Dangote Foundation will pay the bill.' So, which we have now, I think it's a project that is costing us about 650, 700,000 Swiss francs every year. And we're picking up people that we don't even know. Some of them they are you know, but you have to be below 40. Some of them are ministers. So, they go now and join these young global leaders. You know, with a very, very good decision. And they are very happy.

We have, I mean, Nigeria I mean, in Africa by 2030, we'll have almost 1... by 2050, we'll have 1.6 billion working staff. You know, these are young people. You know, in Africa, majority of our population that are below 30. More than 70%.

My reflection is that the future is Africa. When you now sit down and reflect where we are today. And what needs to happen for the future to be Africa? A heavy investment in infrastructure, in training, education, first. Because you have to work with an educated society, of which a lot of the governments they are putting average of about 15, some of them even 20% of their budget into education. You know, because we have to upskill to make sure that yes, we are producing the workers that we need for tomorrow.

The promising countries, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, it's small but it's very, very promising. You have Egypt is promising, Algeria is also promising even though they're not very open. So, there are more than 10 very good countries in Africa that you can go and invest. Ghana is doing extremely well. Côte d'Ivoire, which is in West Africa, they are doing extremely very well. Even Guinea, today you look at the mines that was just opened by Rio Tinto, which cost over 20 billion dollars. You know, so people are coming in now. They realize that yes, Africa is open for business. And people are ready to go into these sectors.

Honestly, Nicolai, you want me to be very open. Yeah, so it's China. China really have dominated business in Africa.

Well, they are making money. They are dominating the landscape. And obviously, you know, Africa's even our own they don't joke with China because China, they put their balance sheet on the table.

Okay, let me... some of the projects like in cement, like some of the things that we do, purchase of their equipments and co. They give you a supplies credit backed by their insurance company, which is called SinoSure. SinoSure has invested to talk about 1.2 trillion in supporting their companies to go abroad and sell their technology, sell their equipments, and giving you a credit of 4 or 5 years. Okay, but if you are now going to... if I now go to Italy, for example, and they're asking me to write a check of a power plant of 500 million dollars that I want to build, and I have one which is also good, might not be even as good as Italy, okay? But the Chinese are saying that no, no, no, just give me 20%. The rest I will give you 5 years financing. Which one are you going to take if you are in my shoes? Obviously, you take the Chinese one because the Chinese one it means that I can do more. These ones they'll soak out my cash and I won't be able to do more. So, for me to grow that big, I also need to leverage. I'm not going to over-leverage, but I need to leverage the business to be able to get to where I want to be. And where we want to be is something very, very, very big. You know, we want to do ports. We are spending 45 billion dollars between 2026 and 2030. So, if I'm going to... you know, obviously, I will lean more to this but right now today, I've seen that US is also changing. This time around when I went to development finance corporation of US, they just got about 208 billion. They are very hungry for infrastructure. They are very hungry for the ports and they are ready to lend. So, with that one then, they are ready for us to now look at them and do more business. I've had the delegation of some people from the House of Reps of the assembly of Japan. And what I told them is that no, Japan you've been missing for a very long time. And today when you are coming, make sure that you come with their own balance sheet on the table because we have choices of buying from many other countries. But if you don't really come with that support, I have to go to a country that can give me that support for me to be able to leapfrog to the next level.

Well, the inequality issue we have to address. It'll be very difficult to do that without addressing the issue of inequality. And that one I think various governments of Africa, they are working towards that. And I'm sure we'll get there.

Well, the climate, you know, when you look at... we're not the biggest polluters. In those whole thing, we're less than 6% of the polluting the environment. So, we're doing quite a lot. You can see... But it's difficult. I mean, cement production is difficult, right?

You know what? It's not like before. If you come to our cement plant in any even under the kiln that is moving, rotating, you can sit down there and eat. The process that we have is more stringent than that of even Europe in our own plants. We are using robotic machines. We are using the dust emission is very low. We are using alternative fuel to make sure that we cut down all this thing. And if you look at it now, what are we doing today? You know, the biggest polluters are shipping companies. So, we are stopping almost maybe 500 ships from going in there to pick up crude to go and refine to now bring back the products. Today as we speak, almost all our trucks, maybe 90% today of our trucks are all CNG. We are not using diesel. Even though we produce diesel, but we are using cleaner energy for that. We are looking at now not only generating power from hydro and gas. We are also doing solar and wind. So, because we have massive land especially in the northern part of Nigeria. So, in every aspect of our own business, which is also driven by the government, is to see how do we actually because this climate change is real. But you know, with us, we have a lot of issues to address first before we now get to that. So, what we are doing now, we are doing them simultaneously trying to provide for our needs at the same time working on the climate. Because I mean today we can't just say that hey, look, climate from today we will not do this. We will not... No. But what we are doing is that yes, we are providing what we need, but at the same time bringing in the climate issues into place so that we will be out of this climate change issues.

Yes.

The key to patience, first of all, you have to have very good people that were leading in the organization. So, sometimes you have to be very patient for people to be able to pick up and be able to prepare themselves for that leadership. So, we are preparing a lot of our people to be able to take over that leadership. And that's why we have to have the patience in terms of okay, fine. Somebody will just not start running first day. So, my leadership style is to make sure that, for example, when I'm hiring people, I always hire people who are more intelligent than me.

Well, you know, if I'm going to have this... You know, in the interview, that's why we just don't do interview through Zoom or whatever. No, no, no. We have to, first of all, sit down with you and talk to you. You know, you can also ask us questions. But, what we are looking for is to have that chemistry. We have to now make sure that we align, we have the same thinking. And you are not thinking of something totally different. You are not thinking of being socialist, for example, or we are thinking about being capitalist. So, that chemistry has to come in.

To tell you the truth, let me be very honest with you. I'm more aggressive now.

Because I've seen a lot of opportunities that I've never ever knew that they exist. Wow. Never. I've never ever... I told people that I've never ever dreamt of my own company. I've been an ambitious person right from childhood. But, I've never ever thought of my company being 10% of where we are today. And we still have a lot of opportunities to go. Because I look at like China. I mean, look at the country for example like Singapore. They don't have natural resources. They don't have land. They don't have anything. But they've been able to create something out of nothing.

Oh, a lot. A lot. I mean, we have the critical minerals. Africa controls about 60% of the world's critical minerals. We have young, energetic population. We have the most arable land in the world. 60% of the arable land of the world is there. Okay? We have land mass. So, all these one and the minerals that we have we're not actually processing any one of them. So, the opportunities are enormous. A lot of now you look at what happened now between Ukraine and Russia. European countries are now ready to see where can they get their energy from like LNG for example. Nigeria like what I keep telling people is not a country that we don't have oil. The oil that we have is not as much as the gas that we have. Most of Nigeria's gas came out by accident as a result of looking for oil. So, when we go now deep looking for gas, Nigeria can be one of the biggest suppliers of LNG in the world. And that's why now we want to do a gas pipeline which the government is promoting and they want us to join taking gas now all the way from Nigeria round up to Spain. By the coast side. So, now we are already in Ghana. So, Ghana the next phase will be Koudougou, Mauritania where they will inject their own gas then Senegal too will inject their own gas. Then we jump into Europe. So, going forward Africa will be supplier of most of these critical items.

What is driving me is legacy actually. It's not about being the richest because I don't have too much of needs, you know, I mean, that's why I mean, today, okay, I have I'm restricted. I cannot just do the giving pleasure right now. I pledge all my wealth to this, you know, in my religion, Islam, it does not allow for that unless if the inheritors agree with you. But, I've given now 1/3 of my wealth to the foundation. If anything happens to me now, 1/3 will automatically go to my foundation. But, what is driving me the most is that we have a lot of needs in Africa. And for people like us, for cooperation like us, we are the ones that supposed to provide that leadership in terms of transforming the economies of Africa. If we don't we'll not be able to get support from anywhere. We have been waiting for long for foreign investors to come and invest and actually show what are the potentials of Africa. But, today we are the ones that will end up showing people that these are the potentials and we believe, I personally believe that by doing so, a lot of cooperations will join us in funding this massive infrastructure that will make Africa to be at the next level.

My legacy will be that I'm one of the one that actually pioneered the industrialization of Africa. That's my focus. To make sure that Africa produce what you consume. This is my main focus and for us to keep pushing to make sure that we have one common market. I have a group which is called the African Renaissance and they're quite a lot any big guy in Africa, 54 of us were in this group which we meet physically once in a year in Rwanda which is Kigali and we've been supported by a lot of presidents and I think the more they understand what we are trying to do the more that we'll achieve. You know, because nobody can transform our continent but us, we Africans. And that is why we're trying to mobilize all the entrepreneurs to make sure that they join us at different levels. Some will be doing big things, some will be doing medium things, some will be doing the you know, this and then that one will attract foreign investment where now because we don't have enough to be able to provide and take the continent to the next level.

Well, the foundations work. You know, the foundation about 2014 I did an endowment of 1.25 billion dollars. So, what we are now doing mostly is actually partnership. We have... I think if I'm right, based on what Mr. Bill Gates told me, he said that, you know, we are one of the best partners they have had as a foundation. You know, we've been able to eradicate polio and we're working on quite a lot of things, being primary health care, nutrition. These are areas that we're working with them. In some areas in education, we're doing that on our own. But as we speak right now, my head of foundation, she's in Saudi Arabia trying to work with other foundation to see how do we really attract because we have, unfortunately, in Nigeria, we have almost about more than 10 million kids out of school. So, we're investing heavily in terms of education. And, as we grow more, we'll keep funding the foundation to be able to take care of all these poverty alleviation, health, empowerment of people, and also education. So, these are the areas that we're really focusing.

How do I relax? I try to sometimes take my grandkids, if they're around, take them to the beach. I love going to the beach, but I love also exercising.

We just go there and play.

I almost, yes. And tell me about it. Well, you know, when I was really very focused on buying Arsenal, then I was also facing the challenge of making sure the refinery gets to its own completion, the fertilizer, the petrochemical. And then when I look at it at that time, I was thinking, 'Fine, but I have needs of funds. Will I go and put... At that time, Arsenal was worth just about $2 billion. Should I put my $2 billion in Arsenal? And now allow the business to suffer, or should I now complete the business, then I can continue to remain a very big supporter of Arsenal.' So, I decided that no, I'm going to continue to support them, watch their games, go there, and I am an Arsenal fan, rather than now trying to take my...

Yeah, I have. Even, I you know, the t-shirts. Every day that any time that they are playing, I always wear the t-shirt. And I have one, you know, which was also signed off by the captain. So, I mean, I'm a fan. It is better for me to remain as a fan and continue to fund my own business, rather than just putting... now I mean, today, they are worth billions, and it's not really worth my while at all.

My own advice to young African people is to work hard. And also have the belief that the future is greater than the current situation that we're in. That Africa is a promised land, and they should stay at home and make sure that we collectively build our continent, rather than just flying out somewhere else.

Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here.