Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote says he waits for trouble every morning at work

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote said he goes to the office each day expecting problems and leaves them behind before he gets home, as he urged women entrepreneurs to raise their ambitions and move from trading into manufacturing.

"Every morning, when I get to my office, I'm waiting for trouble to come," Dangote said in Lagos on Thursday, Nov. 5. "When it comes, I face it. When I finish in the evening, as soon as I get to my gate, I drop all my problems and enter my house."

The president of the Dangote Group gave the keynote address at the 25th annual conference of Women in Management, Business and Public Service, a Nigerian network known as WIMBIZ. The conference ran under the theme "Rooted, Rising, Ready: Born in Africa, Built for the World," and his address was titled "The Geography of Opportunity: Why the World Needs What Africa Has."

Factories over imports

Dangote told the audience that Nigeria risks staying poor if it keeps depending on trading and imported goods instead of domestic production. He said inconsistent government policy and unreliable electricity make manufacturing hard for local entrepreneurs, and he listed poor infrastructure, high operating costs and the difficulty of getting affordable long-term loans as the biggest obstacles to doing business in the country.

He used his own group as the example. Dangote started out importing commodities in Lagos before switching to local production, a move that led to Dangote Cement and later to sugar, fertilizer and oil refining. He recalled the financial strain of building the Obajana cement plant in Kogi State, when high bank interest rates slowed the company's operations and expansion.

He also described how the Dangote Petroleum Refinery near Lagos was first dismissed as unrealistic. The group acted as its own engineering, procurement and construction contractor, and the plant's planned capacity grew from 300,000 barrels a day to 650,000 barrels, with a further expansion to 700,000 barrels, he said.

Dangote urged the women in the room to keep their capital in Africa, understand what they invest in, and move into production and processing. He said Africa holds about 60% of the world's arable land and more than 37% of its critical minerals but makes too little use of them.

"Dream big"

"I'm challenging you to actually increase your ambition. You can get there. Dream big, do not dream small," Dangote said. "There is nothing in life that is good that will come easy. If it is easy, everybody will be the same."

He told entrepreneurs to plan carefully and confront hard situations rather than back away from them. "You must say, yes, it's difficult, but I can surmount all these challenges and I can do it," he said.

Dangote credited the group's growth to vision, focus and tenacity, and to dealing with setbacks without letting feelings take over. "Business does not go with too much emotion," he said. He added that he checks his blood pressure regularly and changes his schedule when he needs to.

Lagos Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat, who also spoke at the conference, said women own about 40% of Nigeria's small and medium-sized businesses but face far greater barriers to finance. He proposed reserving at least 57% of places in state enterprise programs for women-led businesses and offering cooperative loans of up to ₦10 million ($7,326) at 9% interest.

A busy month

The speech came at the end of a heavy few weeks for Dangote. His oil refinery raised about ₦2.15 trillion ($1.58 billion) in an initial public offering that closed in October, and the shares are expected to begin trading on the Nigerian Exchange in December. He also broke ground on a $2.5 billion fuel storage and pipeline project at Walvis Bay in Namibia, and raised his group's planned investment across Africa by 2030 to $60 billion.

Dangote, 69, is Africa's richest person, with a net worth of $55.4 billion, according to Forbes. Most of his fortune is tied to Dangote Cement and the refinery.

Figures were converted at ₦1,365 to the dollar.