Aliko Dangote is the wealthiest person in Africa and has been for most of the past two decades. The Dangote Group he built from a commodity trading business in the early 1980s now spans cement — where it is the continent’s largest producer — sugar, salt, flour, fertiliser, and the Dangote Refinery near Lagos, a 650,000-barrel-per-day facility that, at full capacity, would be the largest single-train refinery in the world. Born in Kano to a business family that gave him his first trading capital at sixteen, he has compounded that start into something without precedent in African business history.
Born in Kano in 1957 into the Dantata trading family, he founded the Dangote Group in 1977 with a 500,000 naira loan from his uncle. Forty-nine years later, the group is the largest privately owned industrial conglomerate in West Africa.
The single largest project of his career is the Dangote Refinery in the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos, which began producing diesel and aviation fuel in January 2024 and has a designed capacity of 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day. He committed roughly $20 billion of equity and debt finance to the project, the largest single industrial investment by a Nigerian-owned company in the country’s history.
This profile covers his Kano upbringing in the Dantata family, his education at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, his commodity trading origins, the build of the Dangote Group’s cement and sugar businesses, the Refinery story so far, and the broader public role he has played in Nigerian economic policy since the 2000s.
Quick facts
Full name
Aliko Mohammad Dangote
Date of birth
10 April 1957
Age (2026)
69
Birthplace
Kano, Nigeria
Heritage
Hausa-Fulani, of the Dantata trading family
Nationality
Nigerian
Education
Capital High School Kano; Al-Azhar University, Cairo (1977)
Primary business
Dangote Group (cement, sugar, salt, refining, fertilizer)
National honour
GCON, 2011
Global recognition
Time 100, 2014; Forbes / Bloomberg global billionaire
Net worth (2026 tracked)
~$32.5 billion (Bloomberg, Forbes)
Early life and family
Aliko Dangote was born in Kano on 10 April 1957 into one of the most established commercial dynasties in northern Nigeria. His maternal great-grandfather, Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, was at the time of his death in 1955 the wealthiest man in West Africa, having built a kola nut and groundnut trading network that stretched from Kano to the Atlantic coast.
Aliko’s mother, Mariya Sanusi Dantata, was Alhassan Dantata’s granddaughter. His father, Mohammed Dangote, was a merchant from the same Kano commercial class, who died when Aliko was eight. Aliko was raised primarily by his maternal grandfather, Sanusi Dantata, in the family compound in Kano.
The Dantata family environment was central to how he learned business. His grandfather, Sanusi, gave him small consignments of sweets to sell to other schoolchildren when he was eight or nine. Dangote has referred to that period in subsequent BBC and Bloomberg interviews as his first real understanding of trade and pricing.
He attended Sheikh Ali Kumasi Madrasa for his primary religious education and Capital High School in Kano for secondary school, completing his West African School Certificate in the early 1970s.
Cairo, the Al-Azhar years, and the first loan
Dangote left Nigeria for Cairo in 1974 to study business at Al-Azhar University, one of the oldest universities in the Islamic world. He graduated with a degree in business studies in 1977 at the age of 20.
He returned to Kano that same year and asked his maternal uncle for a loan of 500,000 naira (then a substantial sum) to start a commodity trading business. The loan was granted on commercial terms, repayable over three years.
Dangote has said in BusinessDay and Forbes Africa interviews that he repaid the loan in under six months, which was the moment he understood the scale at which Nigerian commodity arbitrage was operating in the late 1970s.
Trading years and the move into manufacturing
The first Dangote business, established in 1977, was a commodity trading company that imported sugar, salt, and food products into Kano and resold them across the federation. In 1981 Dangote formalised the operations into Dangote Nigeria Limited and Blue Star Services, both of which expanded the import portfolio to include rice and bulk industrial materials including steel and aluminium.
Through the late 1980s and early 1990s the businesses grew steadily, riding the import-substitution shifts in Nigerian industrial policy. But the strategic inflection came in the mid-1990s, when Dangote began to question the wisdom of importing materials that Nigeria could feasibly produce domestically.
The licensing of cement production in Nigeria, which broke a decades-long reliance on imports from the French manufacturer Lafarge, became the spine of the next twenty years of the Dangote Group’s growth.
Dangote Cement, Sugar, and Salt
Dangote Cement was listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in October 2010. Within five years of listing, it had become the largest contributor to the All Share Index of the exchange. As of 2023, Dangote Cement generated approximately $3.7 billion in revenue and operates plants in Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, and South Africa.
Dangote Sugar Refinery, listed separately, is one of the largest sugar producers on the African continent. Its Lagos refinery on the Apapa waterfront has been operating since the early 2000s and processes raw sugar imported primarily from Brazil. NASCON Allied Industries holds a majority share of the Nigerian table salt market.
The Dangote Sugar Backwards Integration Project, launched in the mid-2010s, has been working toward the substitution of Brazilian raw sugar imports with domestic sugar cane production in Niger State and Adamawa State. The project has been politically contested and is one of the slower-moving parts of the Dangote portfolio.
The Lekki Refinery
The Dangote Refinery, located in the Lekki Free Trade Zone east of Lagos, was first announced in 2013. The project broke ground in 2016 and the construction phase ran for seven years, longer than the originally projected three to four.
The refinery has a designed processing capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, making it one of the largest single-train refineries built anywhere in the world. The total committed investment is reported by Bloomberg and Reuters to be in excess of $20 billion, financed through a mix of Dangote Group equity and syndicated debt from Afreximbank, Standard Chartered, and a consortium of Nigerian banks.
The refinery began producing diesel and aviation fuel in January 2024 and reached significant petrol output by the middle of that year. Through 2024 and 2025, disputes over crude allocation, domestic pricing, and the operational relationship with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited produced periodic operational pauses. Full corporate history is on the Wikipedia entry for Aliko Dangote.
The completion of the refinery has reshaped the West African petroleum products trade. Nigeria moved, within roughly twelve months of significant output, from being a net importer of refined products to being a net exporter in some product categories.
Public service and policy roles
In 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan appointed Dangote to the Economic Management Team, a board-level advisory role on macroeconomic and industrial policy. He has served on a number of subsequent advisory boards across the Buhari and Tinubu administrations and is consistently among the most consulted private sector voices in Nigerian fiscal and trade debates.
He chairs the Dangote Foundation, one of the largest African private foundations by assets, focused primarily on health, nutrition, and education programmes in Nigeria. The Foundation has committed substantial funds to maternal and child health programmes through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency.
Internationally, he has held board positions with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, and the African Development Bank advisory board.
Personal life
Dangote has been married three times. He has three daughters from his earlier marriages, the most publicly visible of whom is Halima Aliko-Dangote, who serves as Group Executive Director, Commercial Operations at Dangote Industries and who has been positioned in financial press coverage as the most likely successor on the commercial side of the business.
He lives primarily in Lagos and Kano, with a long-term residence on Ikoyi’s Bourdillon Road. He maintains additional residences in London and New York.
He is a practising Muslim and has performed the Hajj pilgrimage multiple times. He is known in the Nigerian financial press for an unusually disciplined personal routine, including early-morning starts at his Kano-based residences.
Awards and recognition
President Goodluck Jonathan awarded Dangote the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON), Nigeria’s second-highest national honour, in 2011 for his contributions to private sector development. He has previously been awarded the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON) in 2000 and the Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR) in earlier years.
Time magazine named him to its 100 Most Influential People in the World list in 2014. Forbes has tracked him on the World’s Billionaires List continuously since 2008. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by multiple Nigerian universities, including the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University.
The Government of Cape Verde awarded him their highest national honour in 2014 for his role in the construction of the Dangote Cement plant outside Praia. The Government of Senegal made him a Commandeur de l’Ordre du Lion in 2017.
Net worth and wealth tracking
Unlike most African business figures whose net worth has to be estimated from disclosed asset positions, Dangote’s wealth is tracked daily by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes. Both publications place his 2026 net worth at approximately $32.5 billion, making him the 69th wealthiest person in the world and the wealthiest Black individual on any tracked list.
The primary drivers of his wealth are the family controlling stake in Dangote Cement, the unlisted Dangote Industries Limited which holds the Refinery and other private subsidiaries, and the disclosed stakes in Dangote Sugar Refinery and NASCON.
Bloomberg’s tracking includes a sensitivity adjustment for the Refinery, which is held inside unlisted Dangote Industries and therefore has to be valued by reference to comparable refining assets rather than to a market price. Forbes uses a similar methodology.
As with all such estimates, the Bloomberg and Forbes figures are derived from corporate filings and public reporting and are not verified personal accounts. They are not financial advice.
FAQ
How old is Aliko Dangote in 2026?
Aliko Dangote was born on 10 April 1957 in Kano. He turned 69 on 10 April 2026 and will turn 70 in April 2027. His birthplace remains his primary residence outside Lagos.
What is Aliko Dangote’s net worth in 2026?
Roughly $32.5 billion as of 2026, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes. He is the wealthiest Black individual globally and the 69th wealthiest person in the world. The figure is derived from corporate filings and market prices and is not a verified personal account.
What does the Dangote Group own?
The group is a diversified West African industrial conglomerate. Its largest businesses by revenue are Dangote Cement, the Dangote Refinery, Dangote Sugar Refinery, NASCON Allied Industries (salt), and Dangote Fertilizer. The group also holds smaller stakes in Nigerian banks and real estate in Lagos and Abuja.
When did the Dangote Refinery start producing?
The refinery began producing diesel and aviation fuel in January 2024 and reached significant petrol output by mid-2024. It has a designed capacity of 650,000 barrels of crude per day, making it one of the largest single-train refineries ever built anywhere. Dangote committed in excess of $20 billion to the project.
Is Aliko Dangote related to the Dantata family?
Yes. His maternal great-grandfather was Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, the wealthiest man in West Africa at the time of his death in 1955. Dangote was raised primarily by his maternal grandfather Sanusi Dantata after his own father died when Aliko was eight.
Max Adeyemi is a Lagos-based writer covering Nigerian and African entertainment, sport, business, and culture. He has spent over a decade tracking the careers, controversies, and quiet achievements of the people who move the culture. He writes all profiles on Nolly.
