African Richest nigger!!Aliko Dangote

Aliko Dangote is the ‘golden child’ of Nigerian business circles. He is the managing director of the Dangote consortium, which spans across many sectors of the Nigerian economy. Dangote began his career as a commodities trader; built Dangote Group into conglomerate with interests in sugar, flour milling, salt processing, cement manufacturing, textiles, real estate, and oil and gas.
Listed by Forbes as Africa’s richest man, the Nigerian businessman’s fortune surged 557% in the past year, making him the world’s biggest gainer in percentage terms and Africa’s richest individual for the first time. The catalyst was listing Dangote Cement, which integrated his investments across Africa with his previously public Benue Cement; it now accounts for a quarter of the Nigeria Stock Exchange’s total market cap. Already the continent’s biggest cement maker, he has plants under construction in Zambia, Tanzania, Congo and Ethiopia and is building cement terminals in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Liberia, among other places. Dangote has been shuttling back and forth to London for months, in anticipation of a public offering there later this year.

Beginning
Born in Kano, his grandfather, the late Alhaji Sanusi Dantata provided him with a small capital to start his own business, as was the practice then. He thus started business in Kano in late 1976 trading in commodities and building materials. Alhaji Aliko Dangote moved to Lagos in June 1977 and continued trading in cement and commodities. Encouraged by tremendous success and increase in business activities, he incorporated two companies in 1981. These and others that followed now make up the conglomerate known as the Dangote Group.

Activities
The Dangote Group imports 400,000 metric tonnes of sugar annually which accounts for about 70 per cent of the total requirements of the country and is a major supplier of the product to the manufacturers of Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola and Seven-Up in Nigeria. It imports 200,000 metric tonnes of rice annually just as the company imports tonnes of cement and fertilizer and building materials. Dangote Group also imports fish and owns three big fishing trawlers chartered for fishing with a 5,000 MT capacity. The group exports cotton, cocoa, cashew nuts, sesame seed, ginger and gum Arabic to several countries. The group today is involved in diverse forms of manufacturing with high turnover. Dangote textile and the Nigeria Textiles Mills Plc, which it acquired, produce over 120,000 meters of finished textiles daily. The group has a ginnery in Kankawa, Katsina State with a capacity of 30,000 MT of seeded cotton annually.

The sugar refinery at Apapa port, Lagos is the largest in Africa and in size the third largest in the world with an annual capacity of 700,000 tonnes of refined sugar annually. It also has another 100,000 tonne-capacity sugar mill at Hadeja in Jigawa State. Apart from having substantial investment in the National Salt Company of Nigeria at Ota, Ogun State, the group has salt factories at Apapa and Calabar, a polypropylene bagging factory which produces required bags for its products, over 600 trailers for efficient distribution network and goods meant for export can also efficiently be transported to the ports.

A vehicle leasing unit with over 100 fully air-conditioned commuter buses, is also part of the Dangote Group. It is also into real estate with luxury flats and high rise complexes in Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Abuja and Kano. Dangote Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the group where yearly he spends millions for worthy causes such as contributions to educational and healthcare institutions, sinking of boreholes and giving of scholarships.

The Dangote Group has nationwide staff strength of 12,000 but on completion of on-going projects, it is expected to hit 22,000.As a self-employed person, with minimum basic education, he proves that business success can be through determination, honesty and perseverance; and not necessarily by acquiring first class degrees from top universities. His managerial skill must surely be the envy of economic professors. Instead of stashing his funds in foreign accounts, a common feature of fraudulent front and public office looters, Dangote invests wisely in the productive sector of the Nigerian economy.

Below are Dangote’s business success tips.
1. Manufacture; don’t just trade
Aliko Dangote started business as a trader of commodities; he gathered business confidence and experience as he grew. He says that one of his greatest business moves was moving from being a trader to being a manufacturer. He summed it up by saying, “manufacture, and don’t just trade. There is money in manufacturing even though it is capital intensive. To achieve a big breakthrough, I had to start manufacturing the same product I was trading on. I am an advocate of manufacturing because it does not only improve your business status, it also helps you give back to your community and country; with respect to job creation and economic development.”

2. Build a brand, and don’t destroy it
Aliko Dangote is one of the firm believers of the Brand Power. He advises that to succeed in business, one must build a brand and never destroy it. “One competitive advantage I had when I ventured into manufacturing was my brand “Dangote,” which I diligently built in the course of my trading commodities. Sometime ago, Coca Cola’s assets were estimated to be worth $3billion but the brand name alone “Coca Cola” was valued at over $80billion. That’s the power of a brand. So why not start building a brand today? Your brand could be your saving grace in hard times; it could also turn out to be a very strong competitive advantage for your small business.

3. Sell cheap, give quality and don’t kill the competition
To build a successful business, Aliko Dangote emphasizes the importance of selling quality products at affordable price. This increases customers’ loyalty. The shrewd entrepreneur also advises that: “don’t kill the competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you the entrepreneur on your toes.” 

4. Start small, but dream big
“I built a conglomerate and emerged the richest black man in the world in 2008 but it didn’t happen overnight. It took me thirty years to get to where I am today. Youths of today aspire to be like me but they want to achieve it overnight. It’s not going to work. To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big. In the journey of entrepreneurship, tenacity of purpose is supreme.” – he says.

5. Have connections and pray for a big break
The next small business success secret is business connections. Aliko Dangote is respected for his strong network of business and political connections. You can build your connections and strengthen your network in the business world by increasing your corporate social responsibility, signing joint ventures and partnership deals, forming strategic alliances, attending business events and parties, making political donations and paying courtesy visits to those at the helm of affairs.

To survive in business, you must strengthen your business connections and network. And most importantly, you must pray for a big break. Big breaks are very vital to entrepreneurial survival. In fact, I can hardly point to any successful entrepreneur that wasn’t thrust upwards by a big breakthrough:
a)  Bill Gates had his big break when he negotiated and signed a deal with IBM.
b)  Aliko Dangote had his big break when he secured a license to import cement.
c)  Oprah Winfrey had hers when she started Harpo Studios Productions and acquired the full rights to her shows;  “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”,
d)  Li KaShing had his during a riot period and he began buying properties at rock bottom prices;
e)   Larry Ellison had his when he secured a deal to build  database software for the CIA.
The list goes on and on. So if you really want to take a giant stride in business, you must not only pray for a big break; you must seek it out and be prepared for it when it comes.