“I built a conglomerate and emerged the richest black man in the world in 2008 but it didn’t happen overnight. It took me thirty years to get to where I am today. Youths of today aspire to be like me but they want to achieve it overnight. It’s not going to work. To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big. In the journey of entrepreneurship, tenacity of purpose is supreme.” Aliko Dangote, Founder of Dangote Group
Read my book – The Dangote System – and understand how the accumulation of capabilities which compound can help you build great companies. Dangote began as a trader, just like his peers, but over time, he accumulated capabilities, and moved from the downstream to the upstream. At the upstream, he became the category-king. I explained how anyone can replicate that model in other domains, highlighting the success of Indomie noodles, among others.
Read The Dangote System by Ndubuisi Ekekwe
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Response on FB Feed
Dangote Government Support: Dangote is not the only man that gets benefits or deals from governments. But Dangote is the only man who built an industrialized conglomerate of his own. You do a big disservice to yourself by focusing on what everyone knows and which is a major part of the book: Conglomerate Tax. Yes, Dangote taxes us via these benefits but interestingly all conglomerates in the world do the same.
The problem for Dangote is that he is alone in Nigeria. If there are 20 of them in Nigeria, we will not care. Wait, we will accuse him in 5 years of rigging fuel because he will fix it. In 15 years, he will come for power and fix it, we will say the government gave it to him. What is his magic? That is the book focus, not wasted talking points.
Check Amazon, some cities gave tax waivers to HQ2 in $billions in US (Columbus gave $2.28 billion but lost because it was small https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/amazon-hq2-incredible-incentives-losing-cities-offered.html ). Can any SME in America get the same? Not possible. All conglomerates get government benefits including GE, etc . There is no human with $2 billion to invest who will not ask for government benefits
Follow up: Read the book. Your problem is that you are going after Dangote’s own markets. In markets, there are territories. If you go to cement, he will fight you just as they fought him when he went to banking (his Liberty Merchant Bank went bankrupt, the leaders there gave him what he gives others in cement). He went to noodles, Indomie gave him what he gave others in cement; he lost to Indomie. The illusion in Nigeria is that the government helps Dangote and all his businesses are successful. That is fake news because if you study him, he has many losses. This is how it works: do not go after Ovia, Elumelu, etc in banking because that is their turf. Do not go to Dangote to cement. Power is available. Agriculture is available. Healthcare available, etc. But when you begin to venture into “own” domains, they will fight you.
And do not think it is only Nigeria. There is no Silicon Valley startup that can claim that it can win contracts in Washington DC. Why? Those are territories which some companies have decades-long positioning. They will frustrate you. The world celebrates Elon Musk and Tesla but the government people continue to praise their Ford, GM, etc because those are the people closer to lobbyists. Elon has been begging to be recognized but none cares: you can be the richest man in the world and own the “richest” car company in the world, but you do not have an office in Penn Avenue lobbying for your position. You can win in the market but others own this space https://fortune.com/2022/03/02/biden-elon-musk-tesla-ignored-state-of-union/
I have stopped writing about Ukraine after LinkedIn deleted my opposing view of the global bandwagon Western narrative. With that, I concluded there was no need wasting time since if you have a different opinion, they delete the same. Simply, they censor you which is what they accuse China of. At that high level, business works that way: you keep your lane and they do all to maintain.
Sure, you can fight and get in and if you do, they celebrate it. But it does not come by complaining!
Update: You are making my point and yet you are complaining. I never said that Dangote does not get benefits. I am simply saying that if Azubuike has $1billion to invest in Abia state that I will work to get you government benefits. Dangote should be stupid investing $10billion without asking for incentives. Amazon got $10B just to build second headquarters – that is how conglomerates live.
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