Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has insisted that none of his billions came from inheritance, stressing that he built his empire “from scratch.”
In an interview, the billionaire said that although he was born into wealth, he consciously chose not to rely on family riches but to carve out his own success.
“I came from a wealthy family. My late great-grandfather in the 1940s was actually the richest, you know, West African. My late grandfather was one of the wealthiest Nigerians, you know,” he said.
“The family name is Dantata. That’s from my maternal side. My father, too, you know, was fairly rich, you know, but he was both, you know, in business and also in politics.
“But one thing that I’m very, very proud of is that I did not inherit any money from my father. I built everything from scratch to where I am.”
He further revealed that whatever assets he inherited from his late father were given out to charity.
Dangote recalled that he began his journey modestly after briefly working with his uncle. “I went to Lagos and started my own business by just, you know, buying cement, selling. You know, it was just a very low-key business,” he said.
Explaining why he focused on cement, he said the choice was tied to Africa’s glaring infrastructure gaps.
“When you look at cement, cement is what builds infrastructure, and we need a lot of infrastructural deficits. In Nigeria alone, we have about 17,000 deficit of housing and it is all over in Africa.
“So when we started cement in Nigeria, we realised that the majority of it was actually imported, and that is why we went in there,” Dangote said.
