Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote grooms three daughters to run his $58 billion empire

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote is positioning his three daughters to take over the cement, sugar, fertilizer and energy empire he has spent half a century building, as a record share sale in his oil refinery is set to lift his fortune to about $58 billion.

Mariya Dangote, 47, Halima, 42, and Fatima, 40, have worked in their father's companies for more than a decade, mostly out of public view. All three were promoted to senior leadership positions this year, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Thursday in a profile of the family, the first time the sisters have spoken at length about their roles and the succession.

None of them is being lined up for the top job yet. "This isn't, for now, a succession for the top job," Mariya said. The plan is for the three to take on more of the existing businesses so that their father, 69, can concentrate on the refinery and fertilizer production. "He doesn't want to be in day-to-day chairmanship of all the businesses," she said. "But he has no plans to step down."

Dangote has said on Nigerian television that he is watching the performance of all three and expects one of them to take over someday. He declined to be interviewed for the Bloomberg story.

Three sisters, three domains

Each sister runs a different part of the group. Mariya, who lives in Lagos, oversees commercial strategy for the cement and food businesses, including sugar and salt. She joined the board of Dangote Cement Plc after her father stepped down as its chairman.

Halima lives in Dubai, where she runs the family office, a team of financial and legal advisers set up to manage the family's wealth across generations. She told Bloomberg TV in August that the office would become more visible from early 2027 and that the aim was for the businesses to last "eight to 10 generations."

Fatima, a lawyer who worked at a leading Nigerian law firm before joining her father's business in 2012, heads corporate communications and runs sales for the fertilizer and energy businesses from Lagos.

The sisters say they are not competing to succeed him. "I wouldn't say that there is one of us gearing up to be the president-CEO," Fatima said. "As sisters we want to have control of different aspects of the business. We all have our strengths, so we are focused on where we feel we are the strongest."

The company first framed the changes as the start of a succession plan in February, when it said in an internal memo that the promotions were meant to "empower a new generation to take on expanded responsibilities in shaping our future."

Breaking with tradition in Kano

The sisters grew up in Kano, a mostly Muslim city of about 5 million people in northern Nigeria, where women in business leadership remain rare. "We are young Muslim women from the north, where it's not the norm to work all the time," Halima said. Fatima said they still have to prove themselves repeatedly, "and we are still proving ourselves to our father."

Mariya, the eldest, married in her early 20s and stayed in Kano while her younger sisters went to boarding school and university in the U.K. She needed her husband's permission to study for an MBA, which she completed at Coventry University in England in 2015. "In my culture, women are just meant to be housekeepers, taking care of kids, husbands," she said.

After their father's second divorce, their grandmother became the main caregiver for the three girls. "She taught us how powerful a woman can be," Halima said. Fatima Wali-Abdurrahman, a board member of Dangote Industries Ltd., the group's holding company, said few men in their community would hand their daughters that kind of responsibility. Fatima Dangote's husband, a pilot, now heads infrastructure and logistics for the group.

A $20 billion business heading to market

The group generates about $20 billion in annual sales. Its biggest asset is the $20 billion Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals near Lagos, which has its own jetty, dam, power station and highway.

The refinery's initial public offering, which closes on Oct. 27, is selling about 3% of the business and is expected to raise at least $1.6 billion, the largest IPO in African history. Dangote will keep more than 80% of the shares, and the listing is likely to raise his fortune by almost two-thirds to about $58 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Dangote Cement is also preparing a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange, and the fertilizer business is preparing its own share sale.

The family's businesses face scrutiny at home. Dangote Cement controls more than 60% of Nigeria's cement market, and the country's competition regulator is investigating it and two smaller rivals over a sharp rise in prices this year. The companies have blamed higher energy and logistics costs and the weaker naira. In refining, Dangote has pushed fuel distributors to buy locally and has gone to court to challenge their import licenses.

Mariya rejected the idea that protection from imports explains the group's success. "In the media, some people say Aliko Dangote wants to monopolize the industry, but it's not like that," she said.