The President/Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has become the 96th richest person in the world while retaining his status as Africa’s wealthiest man.
According to the latest ranking of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Dangote “became $4.3 billion richer in 2019 as his fortune continued to grow on the back of investments in cement, flour and sugar.”
Bloomberg, in the report, noted that the 62-year-old Nigerian businessman and Africa’s most prominent industrialist ended the decade with a net worth of $14.8 billion.
His conglomerate, Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), includes the biggest cement company on the African continent, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE)-listed Dangote Cement Plc. “That’s one of four publicly traded companies under the Dangote umbrella that account for more than a fifth of the value of the Nigerian stock exchange,” the report stated.
According to Bloomberg, the year 2020 could be a significant one for the billionaire, who is close to completing one of the world’s largest oil refineries in Nigeria.
It noted that the plant has the capacity to meet more than Nigeria’s entire fuel consumption and could transform an economy that currently imports all its refined product needs. It added that Dangote is also constructing a fertilizer factory on the same site.
“The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world’s richest people. In calculating net worth, Bloomberg strives to provide the most transparent calculations available, and each individual billionaire profile contains a detailed analysis of how that person’s fortune is tallied.
“The index is a dynamic measure of personal wealth based on changes in markets, the economy and Bloomberg reporting. Each net worth figure is updated every business day after the close of trading in New York. Stakes in publicly traded companies are valued using the share’s most recent closing price,” it stated on its website.