Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote will give a third of his fortune, $11.6 billion today

Aliko Dangote intends to leave a third of his fortune to charity, and he has already had his mother and three daughters sign the will that provides for it.

At today's valuation that comes to $11.6 billion. The qualifier matters, because the asset that dominates his balance sheet has not yet been priced by a market.

Halima Dangote, one of his daughters and a trustee of the Aliko Dangote Foundation, disclosed the arrangement in an interview with Bloomberg. "He asked myself, my two sisters and his mother to sign on that will," she said, adding that the scale of the commitment reflects how much the question matters to him.

Bloomberg's Billionaires Index puts his wealth at $35.1 billion. A third of that is $11.6 billion.

Why the figure is a third

The proportion is not arbitrary. Halima said the arrangement follows Islamic inheritance rules, which set fixed entitlements for specified heirs and generally cap bequests outside that circle at one third of an estate unless the heirs agree.

That explains the signatures. Consent from the people who would otherwise inherit is what secures a gift of this size, which is why the will was signed by the family rather than by him alone.

The number is about to move

Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals remains private, and private assets are valued conservatively. Wealth trackers model earnings, apply multiples drawn from listed peers, subtract debt and then discount further for illiquidity. Listed assets receive none of that treatment. The tracker takes the share price and multiplies.

Dangote is targeting a $50 billion valuation for the refinery ahead of a listing on the Nigerian Exchange, which he has said he wants completed in September. The plan is to sell up to 10 percent, raising as much as $5 billion, which would make it the largest public offering in African market history. He has appointed Stanbic IBTC Capital, Vetiva Advisory Services and FirstCap as advisers, and raised $2.5 billion in a private placement this month ahead of the offer.

The gap between that target and his current valuation is the point. If the refinery prices near $50 billion and Dangote retains roughly 85 to 90 percent after the placement and the float, that single holding would mark at somewhere between $42 billion and $45 billion, by Billionaires.Africa's calculation. That exceeds his entire measured fortune today, before counting Dangote Cement, Dangote Sugar, NASCON or the fertiliser business.

Should the market agree with him, a third of his wealth would be worth well above $20 billion rather than $11.6 billion.

He has said for years that both Bloomberg and Forbes understate what he owns, and that the refinery alone is worth more than $40 billion. Neither has moved to match him.

The market may not either. Refining is a low-multiple business globally, the plant cost roughly $20 billion to build with substantial borrowing against it, and debt nets off any valuation. The listing will be priced in naira, so currency weakness erodes the dollar figure even if the share price holds. Brent fell below $85 this week, a reminder that refining earnings move with a cycle nobody controls.

Short of the Giving Pledge

A third still falls below the 50 percent minimum required by the Giving Pledge, which more than 250 wealthy individuals and couples worldwide have signed.

Few Africans are among them. South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe and his wife, Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe, have signed, as have Strive and Tsitsi Masiyiwa, the Zimbabwean telecoms couple, and Tanzanian businessman Mohammed Dewji.

Motsepe founded and chairs African Rainbow Minerals and African Rainbow Capital, which owns GoTyme Bank. His net worth is estimated at $3.5 billion. The portion Dangote intends to give away is already worth more than three times the entire fortune of the best-known African signatory to the pledge he has not joined.

The foundation

The Aliko Dangote Foundation was established in 1994 and endowed with $1.25 billion a decade ago. Halima said it has since received a further $700 million.

Roughly 70 percent of its spending goes to Nigeria, about 20 percent to the rest of Africa and the remainder elsewhere, including a 2010 donation to the World Food Programme for people displaced by flooding in Pakistan. Its most prominent work has been in public health, partnering with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and northern Nigerian state governments on efforts to eliminate wild polio. Africa was declared free of the wild virus in 2020.

In December the foundation committed 1 trillion naira, about $689 million, to Nigerian education over ten years.

A different yardstick

Katja Schiller Nwator, who founded the Lagos-based research organisation Philanthropy Circuit, told Bloomberg the Giving Pledge was designed in an American context and does not capture how giving works on the continent, where it runs more often through families, communities and faith institutions. Her argument is that the useful question is not how much a wealthy African gives but what institutions survive them.

Nearly half of the 50 most unequal countries in the world are African, according to Oxfam. Its 2025 report found that since 2020 the average income of the continent's richest 1 percent has grown five times faster than that of the poorest half.

Two rules

Halima said her father tells people that anyone who wants to succeed must do two things: give to charity, and respect their mother.

Among the four people he asked to sign away a third of his estate, one was his own mother.