Aliko Dangote Quotes

After my death, I want to be remembered as Africa’s greatest industrialist.

When you have made it in life, you must give back to those who made you.

I always make sure I hire people smarter than me.

I need a visa in almost 38 countries, which means an American has more access into Africa than myself.

Africa’s risks are mainly perceived and not real. Unfortunately for us in Africa we are not really very good at telling our own story. But things are changing and people are beginning to understand that things are going very, very well.

I enjoy myself a lot but I derive more joy in working. I believe in hard work and one of my business success secrets is hard work. It’s hard to see a youth that will go to bed by 2am and wake up by 5am. I don’t rest until I achieve something.

Let me tell you this and I want to really emphasize it…nothing is going to help Nigeria like Nigerians bringing back their money. If you give me $5 billion today, I will invest everything here in Nigeria. Let us put our heads together and work.

If I have an idea, I can actualize it through our political leaders.

My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather.

In the journey to success, tenacity of purpose is supreme.

In whatever you do, strive to be the best at it.

Nigeria is one of the best-kept secrets.

The people who were supposed to invest in refineries, who understand the market, are benefiting from there being no refineries because of the fuel import business.

Manufacture, don’t just trade. There is money in manufacturing even though it is capital intensive. To achieve a big breakthrough, I had to start manufacturing the same product I was trading on; which is commodities.

If you don’t have ambition, you shouldn’t be alive.

Don’t kill the competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you the entrepreneur on your toes.

Every morning when I wake up, I make up my mind to solve as many problems, before retiring home

What I always say is that money doesn’t have colour. It doesn’t matter whether you are from Africa or anywhere in the world. The colour of money is the same.

The number one thing that kills businesses in Africa is power – or the lack of power.

You could easily tell that hardwork and perseverance go hand in hand with patience. We often hear people say patience is worth it, yet we don’t practice it. I did and look how well it worked out for me.

Where the foreign exchange is not available, we are cutting down our operations. For example, we had a vegetable oil refinery; we have shut it down. We had a tomato-based processing plant; we have shut it down.

The most dangerous thing for an entrepreneur to do is to actually go into a business that he does not understand fully.

I’m not in it for the money. No, no. I like to run a business that’s successful… I’m a very creative person.

My love for Arsenal dates back to when I went to watch them play with the then-largest shareholder David Dein. I developed a likeness for the team, and I have been a supporter of the team since then.

The gas, which is our main source of power, is priced in dollars.

I used to own two homes in Atlanta. But it was a lot of trouble. There are leaky roofs; you have to call people. It takes up too much time to own property everywhere. Now I stay at the St. Regis. I used to like cars a lot, too. I had 25 of them: Porsches, Ferraris.

If bad and inexperienced politicians control power in Nigeria, my wealth may turn into poverty, and I am not ready to become a poor man.