₦airaland Forum

Nigerian billionaire leaves his imprint in cement
COLUMN ONE
Aliko Dangote made his fortune by betting on African growth. Some call him ruthless, but many Nigerians feel he's brought respect to a nation known more for email scams than manufacturing.
LAGOS, Nigeria —The chaotic color of the megalopolis cascades past the window of his silver Mercedes SUV. A police escort with a flashing blue light clears the road ahead.

Restless and irritated, the billionaire is in his bubble. With a slim, elegant finger, he prods his cellphone screen to redial after the call drops.He grills a squirming subordinate about a production problem that has persisted all week. The call drops again. A small sigh. He redials.

"The day before yesterday you gave me a different excuse. Let's see what excuse you will give me today." His voice is calm, his brow furrowed ever so slightly.

"Go and get your act together, please," he says. "This matter is a disaster."

Aliko Dangote is the richest man in Africa. He dwarfs diamond kings, telecom giants and oil magnates, and his estimated $11.2-billion net worth is four times that of Oprah Winfrey's. His only rival on Forbes' global list of black billionaires is a Saudi of Yemeni-Ethiopian parentage who recently nudged Dangote from the top spot, thanks to a decline in Nigeria's stock exchange.

Dangote's fortune doesn't come from diamonds or oil, but from the cement that is helping to fuel Africa's astonishing growth.

With Europe in crisis and America's recovery sluggish, Africa is an economic bright spot. Nigeria's economy has grown about 7% a year in recent years, just behind Ethiopia, Angola and Ghana. Although many countries on the continent still struggle, a March 2011 World Bank report says that sub-Saharan Africa "could be on the brink of an economic takeoff, much like China was 30 years ago and India 20 years ago."

A lot of the growth is driven by China's need for commodities, oil and gas. But there's another side to it: the cellphone.

Half a billion Africans own them now, enabling a host of day-to-day dealings between businesspeople small and large that a decade earlier would have been difficult or impossible — money transfers, for instance, or instant access to market prices for produce.

Dangote clicks off his phone. But not for long.

*

A two-mile line of trucks snakes along a red jungle road in western Nigeria's Ogun state. At its end, Dangote's newest cement plant looms above the shabby village of Ibese. The trucks wait for their loads as patiently as cattle.

Dangote, 55, built his fortune on Africa's prodigious hunger for infrastructure — and cement — expanding rapidly since 2000 despite his country's chronic bad governance. When the government drags its feet in laying a gas pipeline to service a factory, he builds it. When he needs a road, he does it. Faced with hopelessly unreliable state electricity, he constructs his own power plants for his factories.

He clambered to the top not by looting the country's wealth, like many of Nigeria's elected officials have, but by snapping up privatized state enterprises, then expanding and building his own cement factories and other plants, whose output includes such products as instant noodles and prayer mats.

In that sense, Dangote resemblesRussia'sbillionaire oligarch class, which got rich when the state sold off assets after the collapse of communist rule. His close links with Nigeria's political elite gave him an inside line when state assets were privatized — a process that, like Russia's, has been criticized as opaque and corrupt.

I have always had sex in my dream from Childhood, I never took it serious. I have also gotten pregnant severally in my dreams. I always also had that paralyzing thing that happens to you in your sleep, when you can see your surroundings but can't move, as I grew older, I felt it could possibly be explained by a medical term for sleep disorders.

Recently, I became born again, and found out that several worships and dedication were made upon my soul after my birth, and that my umbilical cord had been buried under a spiritual tree in my Village. So I decide to go on a prayer to rebuke the incubi from my life. I started this morning, and after prayers, I went downstairs, and my gentle loving dog sees me and attacks me with so much ferocity. I was able to run away, and my brothers came down, and the dog was busy licking them and wagging its tail at them!

So I go to work, come back, believing that what happened in the morning was a mistake, and immediately the dog sees me, she and the remaining two dogs attack me again ferociously and give me several bites all over my body. My brothers come and rescue me, and the dogs are sweet to them once again.

Is it possible that they can see the incubi following me around? I prayed that he be sent out from me this morning.

It's a thirty day prayer and I am just on day one.

About 5 000 of us South Africans here in Nigeria looking for a brighter future. Do you know the persecution we now have to face and explanations and embarrassments we have to deal with because of this indiscrimnate and hardhanded behaviour by the South African authorities. Do you know the difficulties that Shoprite, MTN, Game, Multichoise, Debonairs, Woolworths, Standard Bank, etc. will now face to operate in Nigeria with licensing, work permit and deportation issues which are sure to follow if South Africa does not stop this childish behaviour.

While some of the poorer and less eduated Nigerians are certainly dodgy and very good at extortion and sales (of whatever commodity may be doing the rounds - in SA drugs and stolen cars tend to be easily available), many many are nice, honest, well-educated and hardworking citizen.

Our wonderful SA embassy in Lagos and Abuja had the detailed chance to screen each of these deportees on those flights, made them submit six months' bank statements, their yellow cards, detailed explanations of what they are coming to do in SA (many are coming for high-end shopping and therefore bring dollars INTO SA), invitations from SA companies and hotels, etc. etc. before giving them a visa to get onto the flights. If then these who arrive by plane all have valid South African visas, should we not perhaps point more finger at our own Department of Foreign Affairs for not doing their job properly.