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Six years ago, Aliko Dangote wrote a profile of Tony Elumelu for TIME magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, calling his fellow Nigerian billionaire "one of the most innovative and ambitious business leaders of his generation." On April 15, 2026, the compliment came back the other way.
TIME has named Dangote to its 2026 TIME100 list — the 23rd edition of the annual ranking and only his 2nd appearance on it, following a first inclusion in 2014. His profile was written by Elumelu, chairman of United Bank for Africa, Heirs Holdings and Transcorp Group, and founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation. The reversal is one of the more neatly symmetrical moments in African business this year: two men who have built the continent's most widely recognised private empires, taking turns to champion each other on the world's most watched leadership list.
The 2026 TIME100 Summit is scheduled for April 22 in New York, with the TIME100 Gala following on April 23. Dangote appears alongside business and technology leaders including Google's Sundar Pichai, Anthropic co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei, Michael Dell and SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell.
The man Elumelu is writing about
Aliko Mohammad Dangote turned 69 on April 10, 5 days before the TIME list dropped. It is fitting timing for a recognition of an industrialist whose most consequential project is not behind him but unfolding right now.
Dangote's net worth stood at $32.7 billion as of April 13, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — a year-to-date gain of $2.68 billion, up 9%, driven by the performance of Dangote Cement and the continued appreciation of his refinery asset. Bloomberg ranks him 64th in the world and the wealthiest Black individual on the planet. He has been Africa's richest person for 15 consecutive years on the Forbes list. The gap between him and the continent's 2nd wealthiest, South Africa's Johann Rupert at an estimated $18.9 billion, is now more than $13 billion.
The refinery is the centrepiece of that wealth and the main reason he is on this list. The Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos — the largest single-train oil refinery in the world — cost $20 billion and took 11 years to plan and build before beginning operations in early 2024. It has a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, a figure Dangote is pushing toward 1.4 million bpd. Since reaching full capacity in February 2026, the refinery has shipped 456,000 tonnes of refined petroleum products to 5 African countries and positioned Nigeria as a potential fuel exporter at a moment when the Iran war has reshaped African energy supply chains. Dangote is now planning a pan-African IPO of 5-10% of the refinery across the Nigerian Exchange and multiple other African exchanges, with Stanbic IBTC Capital, Vetiva Advisory Services and FirstCap appointed as advisers.
Beyond the refinery, Dangote's group owns 86% of Dangote Cement, Africa's largest cement producer; Dangote Sugar Refinery; NASCON Allied Industries; a fertiliser plant valued at $3.02 billion; and interests in oil blocks, real estate and packaged food. Dangote Cement alone generates revenues approaching $4 billion annually.
Where he came from
Dangote was born in Kano in 1957, the descendant of a trading dynasty. His maternal great-grandfather, Alhassan Abdullahi Dantata, was the richest person in West Africa at the time of his death in 1955. His own father died when he was 8, leaving him to be raised by his maternal grandfather. He launched his first business with a $3,000 loan from his uncle and initially traded commodities — sugar, salt, food products — before a 1996 trip to Brazil convinced him that manufacturing, not trading, was where enduring wealth was built.
He took his first steps into cement in the late 1990s and never looked back. The Obajana cement plant in Kogi State became the largest cement plant in Sub-Saharan Africa. The group now operates cement plants across Nigeria and in multiple African countries. He has been a member of Nigerian presidential economic advisory teams under Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and others, and was awarded the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger in 2011.
The 2020 connection
The symmetry of Tuesday's announcement carries its own weight. When Elumelu made the TIME100 in 2020, it was Dangote who wrote his profile. "A mere handshake says a lot about Tony Elumelu," Dangote wrote in the TIME tribute that year, describing his fellow billionaire as a man who "hardly backs down from any challenge" and a "leading proponent of Africapitalism — a belief that Africa's private sector can and must play a leading role in the continent's development." He said Elumelu was "giving a voice of hope to millions of youths across Africa."
Now Elumelu, whose own profile has been reshaped in recent months by his $496 million acquisition of a 20% stake in Seplat Energy in December 2025, writes Dangote's profile on the same stage. What each chooses to say about the other in the pages of TIME has become a small but telling measure of how Africa's most powerful businessmen see each other — and how they want the world to see the continent.
Dangote has previously said he wants to be remembered as much for his philanthropy as his industry. The Aliko Dangote Foundation spends more than N50 billion ($35 million) annually on charitable programmes, has committed $100 million to combat childhood malnutrition, and partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on polio eradication in Africa — a campaign that contributed to the WHO certifying Africa as polio-free in 2020. He was included in TIME's inaugural TIME100 Philanthropy list in 2025, placed in the "Titans" category alongside Michael Bloomberg, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett and Melinda French Gates. "I want to be known not just as Africa's richest person," he has said, "but also as its biggest philanthropist."
