David i do not consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Aliko dangote is widely known to be the wealthiest man in africa. Is that a title you are proud to have, or is it one where you get so many people calling you for money you wish you were not the wealthiest man in africa . Aliko first of all, thank you very much. It is great to be here. When they call me the wealthiest person in africa, it comes with a lot of baggage. Of course, there are so many demands. People come up with different demands. But it is good because i like to give back to the society. David you are involved in many philanthropic endeavors in africa and elsewhere. Lets go through some of them before we go to how you actually made all of this money. Recently, you had an event in new york, where we are now, with mo ibrahim, a wealthy african businessperson, and bill gates, in which you provided a fair amount of money for the African Center in harlem. What is the African Center and why did you do that . Aliko we did the African Center idea, it started with Chelsea Clinton and my daughter. My daughter joined them later. To makezed that we need this African Center a reality to be able to project africa in a better light. Bring africa to the rest of the world. Especially when you look at the subject of every some temer, we have the United Nations general assembly, the entire world every subject of september, we have to united the United Nations general assembly, the entire world converges in new york. We want to tell the world the real narrative of africa and tell the rest of the world what africa is about. It has to do with policy, business, and culture. Sometimes, especially americans, they do not understand much about africa. Somebody will say, africans, what kind of language do you speak . For example, in africa, we speak about 2000 different languages. David that is a lot. Aliko that is a lot. David one of the problems in africa is health. You have been involved in trying to eradicate polio in nigeria, along with bill gates and his foundation. What is the progress you have made . Aliko we have done quite a lot. The progress has been tremendous in the last three years. Any virus ofd polio. Hopefully, when we work between now and the next six months, we satisfiedwe will be to be a polio free country. The entire african continent will be poliofree. David one of the things you are doing in the philanthropic world is building a hospital in nigeria. Why do you feel the need to build a new hospital . Aliko i feel we need to build a worldclass hospital because when you look at it in nigeria, we spent a lot of money where people go abroad for medical checkups, for medical operations. What you are trying to do is give hope to the population. To say, look, you dont need to travel abroad. We will be able to treat you there. David for those who may not be familiar, nigeria is the most populous country in africa. Is that right . Aliko it is. David it is growing at a large rate in terms of its population. Aliko about 3 . David at the current rate, at some point, more people will be in nigeria than the United States. Aliko by 2050, we will be at about 450 million population. I am sure we will be way ahead of the states. We will be about number three, after china and india. Then nigeria. David by 2050, you could be the thirdbiggest country by population. At the Current Population growth rate. Does that make you nervous about whether nigeria can house and feed all these people . Aliko it does not make me nervous. Because we have massive arable land. We have a lot of water. We have the right climate. The majoru look at istributors of gdp, it agriculture. We need to change from the normal oilreliance economy to agriculture and manufacturing. David nigeria is known for having large oil deposits. Is that a major contributor to the nigerian economy . Is that the major source of wealth in nigeria . Aliko it may be a major source, but it contributes 90 of the Foreign Exchange that we have. 60 of the government revenue is also coming from the oil. But i think the government is doing quite a lot to try to satisfy the economy. By trying to structure their own taxes, because we need to make our money to make more money from taxes. We are working hard to adjust these. David as the wealthiest man in africa and the wealthiest man in nigeria, do you get pressure to run for Political Office . Would you like to be president . Aliko i think i am doing a great job where i am right now. I do not think i need to be in a political space. Some of us, we need to do lead in terms of the trajectory of africa through business, not through political leadership. David lets talk about how you made this amount of money, which is by far the largest amount of money any individual has in africa. You came from a wealthy family or not a wealthy family . Aliko i came from a wealthy family. My late greatgrandfather in the 1940s was actually the richest west african. My late grandfather was one of the wealthiest nigerians. The family name is from my maternal side. My father too was fairly rich, in business and also politics. But in all, david, one thing i am very, very proud of is i did not inherit any money from my father. I built everything from scratch to where i am. David your father died when you were relatively young. Aliko he died when i was eight years old. David he did not leave a large amount of money for you . Aliko he left in the will, but whatever i inherited from im, which means in assets, would give that to charities since then. David did you go to college in nigeria . Aliko no, i went in egypt. David what did you study . Aliko business. David you graduated at what age . Aliko i graduated at 20 years old. David you went back from egypt to nigeria. Aliko yes, i went back. David did you get a job . What did you do . Decided to work with my own call, then i started my own business buying cement. It was a lowkey business. David you are a trader. You are not making cement, you are trading it. Aliko i was trading it at that time. Such a bigis cement part of africas wealth . Aliko when you look at cement, cement is what builds infrastructure. We need a lot of infrastructure. In nigeria alone, we have 17,000 housing. It is all over africa. When we started cement in nigeria, we realized it was actually imported. That is why we went in there. And it is a long story. David you were openly trading cement. Was it hard to get the money to keep the business going . Aliko it was not really hard. At the time, i was buying domestically. By 1980, we started importing sugar, rice, commodities. Then we started the cement business because the cement, i was doing local trading. It was not an importing business. We started the import of cement in 2000. David you had a cement trading business. Somebody thought buying it, you decided not to sell. Because they wanted control. Yet, you then decided to build your own cementmanufacturing business. Is that right . Aliko yes, i decided in 2003 to build my own cement. At that time, nigeria was only producing about 1. 9 million tons. We started producing 5 million tons of cement. David what year was that . Aliko this was 2000 we started building at the end of 2003. We finished in 2007. David now you are the largest cement manufacturer in nigeria. Aliko the largest cement manufacturer. David you are building a refinery in nigeria. Why does nigeria need another refinery . Aliko when you look at subsaharan africa, we have only two water refineries. David the cement business is the core of your wealth and your company. But you are now building other things. So you are building a refinery in nigeria. Why does nigeria need another refinery . Aliko david, let me give you a little bit of history. What we have done with the group, we use businesses to build the future of the business. In sugar, it was the sugar profits we used in building the cement. Now with cement, we are building so many things. Refineries, fertilizer, petroleum. Products. Then also chemicals. With the refinery, your question is why are we building a refinery . When you look at the entire subsaharan africa, we have two working refineries. One only serves 7000 barrels a day. The other is in south africa. But the majority of these countries, almost all of the subsaharan african countries, they do not have refineries. They export their oil. We realized that the majority of the foreignexchange in nigeria was to Petroleum Product imports. David nigeria is exporting oil and has to buy Refined Oil Products back imported, right . What you are doing is building one of the largest refineries in the world . Aliko it is the largest single line in the world. It is 650,000 barrels a day. David 650,000 barrels a day in refining capacity. To do that, you have to borrow money . Where did the money come from . Aliko what we are doing now, we are borrowing from the commercial banks. We are also borrowing from Financial Institutions like the african bank. We ar david Many Companies oute of africa would like to invest in africa. Where do you recommend they invest . Nigeria, south africa, kenya . Obviously you are probably partial to nigeria, but are there good Investment Opportunities for nonafricans in africa . Aliko there are opportunities for everybody. I think there is protection for everybody. As we speak today, let me give you an example. In nigeria, if i have my partnership with you, i will not have what you call minimum taxation. But if the company is owned by myself alone, as a nigerian or nigerian entity, we have a minimum taxation. There is quite a lot in terms of inviting foreigners to invest. Suggesttries that i can to invest, one of them of course , nigeria. Ghana is a very good place to. Nvest kenya. Kenya is a very good place to invest. David i first met you a number of years ago when i was raising my firms African Investment firm, and you invested in it. Today, the bloom seems to be off the rose in African Private Equity investing. It was very attractive six years ago. Today, it seems to be less attractive. Is that because economies in africa have gone down a bit . Or what would you say is the reason . Aliko i think most of that reason has to do with lack of understanding of where to invest. Look at the investments that were made. 90 of what we invested in has done well. I think it is where you should invest. Even myself as an african, i cannot invest in every sector. So i have to be very choosy where i invest. There is a lot of a wrong perception. People read stories from newspapers and they believe what they are reading. But i think, as we go along, there are quite a lot of changes in most african countries to try and change in terms of focus on the economy. David you live principally in lagos, is that right . How many people are there in lagos . Aliko we have 25 million. David 25 million people. Aliko in terms of population. It is small. David getting around is not easy. Getting around new york is not that easy either. When you get around, do you have special police cars that take you around . How do you get around lagos . Aliko i get around, sometimes i have a police escort, but not all the time. I drive myself. David you drive yourself . Aliko yes, i do. David do people say, there is the wealthiest men in africa driving himself . Aliko they do sometimes. When they recognize the person driving. David when you go to restaurants by yourself, do people come up for selfies or ask for money . Aliko they do not ask for money. Even here, when i go to places get a lot of, i requests for selfies. It is normal. David you have some outside interests. One of them i think you are interested in what we call in the United States soccer, but other people call football. The arsenal team, is that a team you would like to buy . Aliko yes, i would like to buy someday. What i keep saying today, we have 20 billion worth of projects. And i think that is what i want to concentrate on. I am trying to finish building the company. Then after we finish, maybe in 2021, we can. David you are not buying a team right now . Aliko not right now. I am buying arsenal when i finish. I am trying to take the company to the next level. David what are the attributes you think you have brought to the table which make you successful . Aliko the most important one, number one, david, if you are going into any business, you must understand the business. You must know that business. David in terms of africa itself generally, are you bullish on africas prospects . As a place in which people can invest, private equity firms or Industrial Companies to invest . Aliko i think i am very, very bullish when it comes to africa. 20s the reason why we have billion to invest, which we will finish by the end of next year, First Quarter i mean, in the next two years. I am very bullish. I have done very well in africa. I can tell you, if we continue with what we are doing today, based on our own projections, we will be able to be, within the next five years, in the fortune 500. David sometimes i see advertisements for dangote, your company. Is that general brand building . Why do you advertise in the United States the dangote brand because most of your businesses are not in the United States . Aliko it is brand building. What i plan to do, we are not going to remain only in africa, we are going to invest outside africa. Because what we are doing right now is we are investing mainly in subsaharan africa. If you look at what you are building today, we have a company that has revenues of 4 billion. In the next two years, the company will have a revenue of about 30 billion. So with that, we will have quite a lot of money. What we are trying to is use a major part of that money and invest outside africa and maybe 40 of it we will invest in africa very heavily. David you are in your early 60s. Aliko i am 62. David that is pretty early 60s. You intend to do this for 10 more years . 20 more years . 30 more years . Aliko i think i will maybe be be activenext in the next 15 years. David lets suppose someone is watching this and wants to be a successful businessman in africa. What are the attributes you think you have brought to the table which make you successful . Is it intelligence . Hard work . Persistence . All of those things . What would you say are the most important attributes . Aliko the most important one, number one, if you are going into any business, you must understand the business. You must know that business. You should not invest because somebody will say, that is good money. You have to understand the business in and out. That is the difference with me. I know my business in and out. You can wake me anytime and ask me about fertilizer, anything we are doing. The other one is to work hard and you have to have the tenacity to continue. You have some hiccups here or there. But you have to be focused in terms of what you are doing. David i have known you for a while and i never seem to get you to yell or scream. You seem very lowkey. You do not use the technique of yelling or screaming at people. Are you just very lowkey and even killed and even keeled . To what do you attribute that . Aliko that is my nature. I am very quiet. I am very calm. I get upset sometimes when people try to outsmart me. I do not like people who will not tell me the truth. I always like people to look at me and tell me the truth. David are you investing in the United States . Aliko we are going to start investing in the United States. We want to open a Family Office in new york and london. We have an office in london, which has been operating for 30 years. We want to turn part of that into a Family Office to diversify the wealth. As you know, i have discussed this with you before. Sometimes in africa, you have issues of devaluation. So we want to reserve some of that. David sometimes wealthy people collect art, collect cars, collect other things. What is some of your wealth you are not using for philanthropy, are you a collector . Aliko i am not really a collector of art. Anytime when i have excess money, i put more in terms of charity. I do not have an expensive lifestyle. David the great pleasure of your life is building your company and giving away extra money . Aliko that is my greatest pleasure in life. David it is a good success story. I know a lot of people wanted to hear how you have done it and i guess you are saying it is hard work and persistence. A little luck from time to time. Aliko luck, definitely. Luck must be there. If there is no luck, you cannot make it. David thank you for coming today. I appreciate you giving us your insights. Thank you. Aliko thank you so much. Emily he grew up in rural germany, tinkering with computers and writing code. In 2002, a love story brought him to canada, where he tried his luck as an entrepreneur, opening an online snowboard shop. He realized selling online was a real opportunity. Over a decade later, shopify is now canadas largest publicly traded company by market value, powering over a million online merchants around the world. Joining me remotely on this special pandemic edition of