*Aliko Dangote, President/ Chief Executive Officer Dangote Group
The business mogul, who was born on April 10, 1957, is a graduate of Business Studies from the Al-Azahar University, Cairo, Egypt. He was the former President of the Nigerian Stock
Exchange (NSE). He started business in 1978 trading in rice, sugar and cement, before he ventured into full-scale manufacturing.
Dangote, who now controls huge holdings of commodities comprising; real estate as well as telecommunications projects has certain secretes that the public doesn’t know about him.
Below are the nine things you should know about him;
1. Dangote, who has been a businessman since he was a child, buys boxes of sweets and sells them at a profit to his fellow classmates while he was in primary school in the 1960s. He started the Dangote Group at the age of 21 after studying business at the University of Cairo.
2. Dangote, who opened a Twitter account- social network on New Year’s Eve of 2013, currently has more than 50,000 followers. He uses his tweets to address malnutrition, the Davos economic conference, and entrepreneurship although no selfies for the now.
3. Despite the business mogul’s tight schedule, he frequently engages himself in jogging sessions, according to him: “Exercise is better than any medicine I can take. Exercise and sleep”.
4. According to Brian Browne, former U.S. Consul General to Nigeria, Dangote receives special treatment from the federal government in the form of exclusive import rights while high taxes or bans are imposed on competitors’ imports, a claim he, however, refuted and alleged that he only maintained friendships with elected official.
5. The Africa’s richest man is a philanthropist. Through his Dangote Foundation, more than 10 billion naira has been donated to fight poverty in the country. Aside business grants, the foundation usually sends cash transfers to women and children who suffers the worst effects of poverty in order to alleviate their plight.
6. Dangote has unbelievably survived multiple plane crashes. He has so far successfully walked away from three plane crashes. One of those crashes was responsible for the death of Dangote’s brother and the son of late General Sani Abacha, in 1996.
7. Dangote is not the first wealthy person in his family as his great grandfather, Alhassan Dantata, was probably the richest man in West Africa as at then.
8. Dangote’s main attention is on his Nigerian homeland as he is very dedicated to building up the country aside owning holding companies all over Africa.
“If you give me $5 billion today, I will invest everything here in Nigeria. Let us put our heads together and work” he once said in an interview.
These secrets were not what you were expecting, right? But it’s, nevertheless, motivating and inspiring you would agree.
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