The Dangote System: Techniques for Building African Conglomerates

Good People,

Something happened last week. A CEO read my piece on Aliko Dangote’s presentation in the Elumelu Forum.

The evolutionary process also saw enormous strategic vision. This is part of the accumulation of capabilities and building moats which make it harder for competitors. By improving efficiency across all segments of its operations, even in a region where there are challenges with infrastructure, a competitor cannot easily find things to improve upon. With its scale, you cannot find any area to improve and have lower cost advantage. In other words, if Dangote Group can efficiently move items, you cannot come in and use that element to compete because the efficiency attributed to transportation in the conglomerate has been built into product costing. Dangote listed some areas he deepened capabilities to improve his business processes as follows:

He emailed me that he would like me to come and talk to his Executive Management to “download” Dangote business method and philosophy in all of them. I told him that I wish I understand Dangote a lot. He said do not worry – I have seen his video but I could not finish watching it. But somehow you made a masterpiece of the presentation. “You come and explain to us”. My firm runs an executive mgt/board level technology advisory service.

This afternoon, they made a contract: my firm will spend two days training the Executive Management on The Dangote System: Techniques for Building African Conglomerates. So, I am now an expert on Dangote business philosophy!  I will put all in a book next year to be available to tekedia.com subscribers.

And meanwhile, we offer frameworks, yes the Dangote System, to help companies win. I have made all my works on Dangote a system which can be applied across industrial sectors. That is another product for the African market. Go figure how ideas emerge!

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