DJIBOUTI, 24 September 2026 (#ADI) – On Thursday, alongside the Djiboutian Head of State Ismail Omar Guelleh and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, he laid the foundation stone of an oil terminal in Damerjog.
For 69-year-old Aliko Dangote, this is another step in an ambition he has pursued for forty years: to make Africa produce what it consumes.
Born April 10, 1957 in Kano, northern Nigeria, in a family of Haoussian traders, he is the great-grandson of Alhaji Sanusi Dantata, one of the largest traders in West Africa. He graduated in management from the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and started in 1977 in Lagos, thanks to his uncle’s loan, in the rice, sugar and cement trade. In 1981 he founded the group bearing his name.
The trader becomes an industrialist. It stops importing to produce on site: cement, sugar, flour, salt. Dangote Cement is the first cement manufacturer on the continent, present in about ten countries. This vertical integration, from raw material to finished product, makes it one of Africa’s biggest fortunes year after year.
Its boldest bet is the Lagos refinery, with a capacity of 650,000 barrels a day, among the largest in the world. It must end a paradox: Nigeria, the continent’s largest producer of crude oil, imported most of its fuels. Fertilizer and petrochemical units complete the set. The construction site, in billions of dollars, was skeptical for years before entering service.
Djibouti follows this logic. Its port, Ethiopia’s maritime outlet, offers the group a gateway to the Horn of Africa.