Nigeria: Africa's Richest Man Bets Big On Oil Refinery

5 January 2014

Text Box: Aliko Dangote set to spend $9 billion on refinery project as wave of consumerism sweeps the continent Africa's richest man sat barefoot on his new yacht in a lagoon here after another night of about three hours sleep. The day was filled with meetings about his cement company and preparations for a polio-fighting trip with fellow billionaire Bill Gates. His BlackBerry buzzed every few minutes with messages from the president of Benin, and a former U.S. ambassador wanted some face time.

"You don't see any sign of stress on me," Aliko Dangote said with a tight smile. The 56-year-old businessman said he was getting an energy boost from a weeklong fast that limits him to six glasses of watermelon juice a day. For two decades, Mr. Dangote (pronounced DAHN-go-tay) has turned his relentlessness, connections and entrepreneurial bets on the rise of Africa into a fortune estimated at about $22 billion. Most of it comes from his controlling stake in a conglomerate of cement, sugar, salt and noodle factories sprawled across 16 countries. Profits in three publicly traded companies he controls hit $1 billion in the first nine months of 2013, up 43% from a year earlier. Mr. Dangote now has a plan to quintuple his wealth-and become one of the five richest people in the world. He will spend $9 billion to build the largest privately owned refinery in Nigeria, which produces more oil than any other African country but must import most of the motor fuel and diesel it uses because existing refineries are dilapidated and inefficient. Within about two years, the new refinery in a stretch of swampy shoreline outside Lagos could start piping in crude from roughly seven miles offshore, bypassing a traffic jam of tankers often stuck for weeks. Competing against four government-managed refineries that run at barely 20% of their capacity, Mr. Dangote would double the country's maximum refinery output. The refinery project is a bet that Africa's economy will keep growing much faster than the rest of the world, especially as a wave of consumerism sweeps the continent.

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