Who am I? Aliko Dangote and for the people, what industry did you decide to pursue a career?

Who am I? Aliko Dangote and for the people, what industry did you decide to pursue a career? Well, we have a lot of industries. You know, we have the oil and gas which is the largest single train refinery in the world, 700,000 barrels a day, which we just finished about $20 billion with petrochemicals. And then we are into fertilizer, we are into, you know, so we have a vision which is 2030 to be more than $100 billion dollars of revenue, all coming out of Africa. Currently at your company, what was the most amount of money you made in a single year for the business? Well, first quarter we did about $10 billion. $10 billion? Yes. Did you have any idea growing up that you were going to build a company like this? No, no, not even 1%. What was your turning point to really realize that you could build an empire of a business? The issue is that I've realized that, you know, I've seen the development of Asia and I've seen that Asia is only being developed by Asians and, you know, I realize a lot of people are not coming to Africa because we have not been investing in our continent. So I tried to say, okay, fine, you know, let's move to that trajectory. I realized that most of the things that we are trading in, which is like cement, sugar and coal, it's all been imported and been dumped into Africa, where we are not creating jobs, we're actually importing poverty and exporting jobs out. So we decided that, no, let's try and see how do we actually not only invest, how to encourage other people to come and invest in Africa. We've got 24 million followers, we do 200 million views a month. Why Africa? Why should people all over the world and particularly the United States not be overlooking Africa? Why should Americans be looking to invest in Africa? Today in Africa, 70% of our population they are below 30 years of age and we have 60% of the world's arable land. We have two thirds of the world's mineral sources. By 2050 we're going to be 2.5 billion of population. So the real future is Africa. You built a cement company, you built a rice company, a flour, but my question is, what did you know about building boring businesses that nobody else knew? We went into real physical businesses, you know, so that actually these are things that we need. These are things that people are producing elsewhere, bringing into the continent. And these were things that I was trading in. So I tried to do what you call backward integration to now produce what we used to import. And now we are upscaling because those businesses were too big for those businesses. So we've gone into oil and gas where the scale is huge. You know, I mean, between 2026 to 2030, we have a budget of over 46 billion dollars which we are investing, but all in Africa. Were you ever afraid of competition? No, no, never. How do you stand out from competition? Because some of these industries I'm sure could have could have been competitive. The people who can compete to us, who are very big, they are heavy as big as we are, they will not come to Africa. So don't worry, competition will not come, but I know the business more than they do, even though they are professionals in those fields. What is your best sales and negotiation advice to anybody in business? In sales, the first thing that you have to do is that you must actually treat the customer as a king. Yes, what he's a king. You know, if you don't sell your goods, you cannot grow. So that's why customer is a king. How old are you now? I'm 69 years. 69. According to Forbes, what is your net worth? What do they say? I don't really look at those things. They are very destructive. They will distract me. How much would you say that you're worth today? I don't know really. I mean, our refinery, I know it's worth over $40 billion, just the refinery. I don't know. It will come out soon. Don't worry. Forbes says that you're worth over $30 billion. They say I worth $38 billion, but you know, most of our businesses are not listed yet. Reason why I say that is everyone I've met that has interacted with you, they say that you're incredibly humble despite being this successful. How have you stayed so humble despite becoming the richest person in Africa? I've been humble all my life and I came from a family that they've been very, very humble. They always teach me discipline and also to be very, very down to earth. You're 69 years old, you have several billion dollar companies. What keeps you motivated? Why are you still motivated? Well, you know, the issue is that I don't have many hobbies. My number one hobby is my business. I enjoy it. Do you think that's an important ingredient to your success? Because you love what you do? Yes, I do. And I know what I do very well, because if you don't really understand your business, you cannot run business. I want you to think about the smartest, most successful people that you know. What do they all have in common? What's that one thing? They are very focused and they do understand their businesses and they are not doing the business only to make money. You know, I mean, I've actually passed the stage of just doing business to make money. It is to leave a legacy and also to make sure that yes, you create wealth for other people. How do you want to be remembered? I want to be remembered as somebody who has actually free of Africa in terms of exporting raw materials, only importing goods. I want to industrialize Africa. That's what I want to be remembered for. And you know, we do quite a lot in the foundation. We have a Aliko Foundation which we give out a lot of money. 30% of my wealth is to the foundation. Do you believe in God? Of 100%. How did you know God was real? God is real. Even if I look at myself, I know that God is real. My final question for you, your last message to the younger generation, back in these last 30 seconds to give the younger generation one more piece of advice. One day, really become successful and make it. What's your last piece of advice? First of all, you have to be very honest. You have to be very, very strategic. You have to know exactly what you are doing and you know, don't get discouraged if sometimes, yeah, things do happen. There must be ups and downs, even in life. Today you are healthy, tomorrow you have challenges of health. But once you are focused and you know what you are doing, you get there. Was the sacrifice worth it for you? Yeah, it is. It was. Yes. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate that and I connect with all the billionaires that I interview. Could I get your contact? Yes. Is that cool? He will give it, yeah.