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As a general rule, I do not get nervous about oil refineries. But the one that is gradually taking shape on 2,500 hectares of wetlands outside Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, is so big, so daring and so potentially transformative that it looks like the lunar landing from Africa and to its Panama Canal. If Aliko Dangote, the billionaire businessman behind what he calls his "crazy" project of $ 12 billion, can get out of it, he will become John D Rockefeller of the continent, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon combined. And once he has built it, he intends to offer a little indulgence: he will buy Arsenal, his favorite football club.
"When we finish this project, Nigeria will be the first exporter of," he told me, summoning the lowest platitudes for a project of pharaonic ambition.I am sitting with the man Africa's richest, discussing his life of superlatives on Thai food on his 108-foot yacht, moored in Lagos Lagoon.But, the image he projects looks more like a salesman's.
When I arrive at the wharf, Dangote, a Muslim, prays in his quarters, he comes to greet me soon and turns out to be the most caring of the guests. "Feel at home home, "he says," we can hang that up for you, "he adds, as I place my wrinkled jacket on the yacht's white leather couch," Can we give you something to drink? "
Dangote reviews the options available to us: "There are rolls of vegetables, chicken wings in a BBQ sauce, Thai green curry, noodles. . "You are my guest, so what do you want? Do you want rice?"
I drink for jasmine.
"Do not you eat egg?"
You asked me to pick one, I protest
Like satay, I say pointing to one of the plates.
"C & # 39; is satay, actually. "
He makes me go out several dishes – it's always fun to be served by a billionaire – and we dig It's delicious, and there's a plate of sauce green chili to liven up debates Dangote creaks in a spring roll and ignores the phone softly buzzing on the table
Some figures on the refinery will help illuminate the scale of his "madness." When it will be operational – it starts – it will process 650,000 barrels of oil a day, one third of every drop produced by Nigeria and nearly 1% of global output .This will make it the largest refinery of oil of its kind in the world. As a kind of secondary concern, it will pump all the plastic that the 190 million Nigeriens need (or imagine that they need it), plus 3 million tons of fertilizer a year, more than all farmers are currently sprinkling on their fields. more interesting, Dangote builds everything on a swamp. (This is a tax-friendly swamp, at least.) This requires sinking 120,000 heaps, averaging 25 meters in length. No port in Nigeria is large enough to receive massive equipment, which includes a distillation tower the height of a 30-story building, and no roads are strong enough to bear his weight. Dangote had to build both, including a jetty for which he dredged the seabed on 65 cubic meters of sand.
There is not enough industrial gas in the whole country to solder everything, so Dangote will build its own industrial gas. plant. There are not enough trucks, so he produces them as a joint venture with a Chinese company. The plant will need 480 megawatts of power, or about a tenth of the total that Nigeria, hungry for electricity, can muster. You guessed it. Dangote also builds its own power plant.
For years – and absurdly – Nigeria has exported all of its crude oil and then reimported refined petroleum, such as gasoline and benzene. This has been a lucrative fiasco for intermediaries who are planning import contracts and concocting ways to scam a system distorted by subsidies. "I'm sure you know about this game," says Dangote.
Because of his reputation as a skulduggery, he says, he avoided the oil trade. "It's very simple to destroy a name," he adds, referring to a family business that goes back to his maternal great-grandfather, Alhassan Dantata, a prodigiously wealthy merchant who imported kola nuts from Canada. Ghana and exported groundnuts from Nigeria. "But it's very difficult to build it."
He tries to fast at least once a week, he says, looking at our feast with guilt. "It helps to clean your system.More peanut sauce?"
Many billionaires today derive their intangible fortune: Internet, media, banks or hedge funds. Dangote made his money with more prosaic things: salt, sugar, flour and especially cement.
He was born in Kano, a former commercial city in northern Nigeria, where he was raised by his grandparents after his father's death, when Dangote was eight years old. After studying commerce at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, he moved to Lagos to orient himself alone. He too became a merchant, but unlike other businessmen whose fortunes were built on import licenses available to friends of politicians, Dangote wanted to do things.
Lagos Lagoon
Now 61, the construction of its refinery is the culmination of this ambition. It will produce every liter of refined oil that Nigeria needs, which could put an end to the import business at one go, thus saving the country billions of dollars. in foreign currency. Will not he make enemies of those that he deprives easy money? "You can not just come and take food off their table and think that they're just going to watch you do it," he says. "They are going to try all sorts of stuff – it's a very, very tough society, only the hardest survive here."
Most Nigerians assume that Dangote is harder than the next one. While for many he is a hero who builds factories, employs thousands and reinvests his money at home, to others he is a villain: a ruthless monopolist who squeezes the favors of the government of the day and crushes the competition like limestone in a concrete mixer. Some accused it of avoiding taxes by invoking an investment incentive known as "pioneering status". Others say that he is more of an annuitant than an entrepreneur, digging the country with high prices and raking in derisory profits. "People throw you a lot of mud and you have to see how you can clean it," he says of his detractors.
In person, he is charming himself, a soft-spoken man with a pleasingly round face, short cut hair and a graying mustache so finely trimmed that it's almost no longer there. He projects integrity and humility, even piety. I've met simple millionaires with more wits than him. Yet, Dangote is a billionaire 14 times more and the 100th richest person in the world, according to Forbes.
He is an extraordinary networker. Watching him work, is to witness a kind of genius. He radiates a Dickensian bonhomie as he slips from table to table, picking up goodwill – and intelligence – with every pressure of the flesh. If there are competing obligations – the wedding reception of the daughter of a big man, a dinner for the vice president, a post-conference gala of foreign investors – he manages to attend At all three events at once, an unhurried appearance of the room as he had all the time in the world. Like Bill Clinton, he remembers your name; like Al Capone, he has your number.
Even the Dangote yacht – named Mariya, after her mother – manages to be underestimated, if such a thing is possible in a boat of 108 feet with a price, according to the tabloids gossipy of Lagos, of 43 M $ . It was decorated after a boat owned by fellow Nigerian billionaire, Femi Otedola, although oddly Dangote made his little built shorter
.
He does not hide how he got his big break from him, from a wealthy man – and in any case a bit dilettante – into a business colossus whose interests overlap the continent. This happened a day shortly after the election in 1999 of Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military leader who had embraced the country's march towards democracy by running for president. Dangote contributed to this campaign and his subsequent reelection in 2003.
"Obasanjo called me very early in the morning and said:" Can we meet today? & # 39; Said Dangote, recalling the presidential summons. He wanted to know why Nigeria could not produce cement, but imported it by boat. Dangote told him that it was more profitable to trade than to produce. It is only if imports were restricted that it was worth it. Obasanjo agrees. Dangote has never looked back.
Now undisputed king of Africa of Cement, he produces in 14 countries. I hear that the company is making 60 percent margins. 100, I say. He waves the number. "We have a margin of 47%," he says, as if it's a mere trifle. No one else can compete on efficiency, he says.
Critics say that Nigeria pays more for cement than it should, slowing investment in construction and housing. When I put this to him, he will immediately pick up his phone, checking the prices of today in Ghana, Benin and Cote d 'Ivoire. Its price is competitive, he adds, adding that people often forget the high transport costs of importing.
Muhammadu Buhari, the current president, despairs of a manufacturing base that shriveled up because of oil dependency. imports toothpicks.
"What Nigeria needs is to locally produce what we can produce locally," Dangote said, nibbling at a skewered satay and defending the thought that made him rich. "Nigeria is still importing vegetable oil, which makes no sense." Nigeria still imports 4.9 million tonnes of wheat, which makes no sense. still 97 or 98% of the milk that we consume. "On this last point (surprising, considering the 20 million cows of the country), he says:" The government must put in place a draconian policy to prevent people from d & # 39; to import milk, as they did with cement. "
His phone still vibrates. This time he takes it. He flew to India the next morning on his private jet and makes the final arrangements. While he's talking, I'm taking a second serving of the seafood salad, a squid-like dish of ceviche and succulent shrimp marinated in a climbing sauce.
"He was very, very, very hectic" program. This is only the same morning that his doctor warned him to slow down and sleep more. He estimates that he rarely receives five hours a night. "The heart, it grows, grows and grows, but there must be a limit."
Often, it fights fires. Problems break out in one country or another and he constantly travels the continent by jet. In Tanzania, where he built a $ 650 million cement plant, he fought with the president for a threat of seizure of assets. Shortly after meeting with Dangote, his country director in Ethiopia was murdered.
When he does not deal with crises, he repels his friends and loved ones, who often ask for help of a pecuniary nature. "People call me in the middle of the night to tell me about their problems," he smiles ironically.
Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister and friend of Dangote, told him that he had to filter his calls. "Tony said that he only makes three phone calls a day," says Dangote incredulously using noodles. Every day, dozens of emails arrive. "You try to be polite and respond, but they come back to you with a longer email, regardless of whether the person is very busy," he says sadly. He estimates that it takes more than 100 calls a day. "Look at Aliko," Blair told him, "the world is not going to collapse if you do not answer your phone."
Dangote's program also hinders romance.Two divorced and with three adult daughters, he is looking for a new wife. "I do not get younger. Sixty years old, it's not a joke, "he says," but it does not make sense to pick up someone if you do not have the time . At the moment, things are really, really busy, because we have the refinery, we have petrochemicals, we have fertilizer, we have the pipeline. With sweet lyrics like that, I think about myself, it can not be good before it wins the heart of a lucky woman. "I have to calm down a bit."
His ambitions change. He talks about retiring from the company, focusing on the strategy and letting others handle things on a day-to-day basis. "I will try to leave the boards of directors." He will lead the cement business in London, perhaps by the end of the year, and has already appointed independent directors, including Cherie, the wife of Tony Blair.
He remains Nigeria's strongest advocate, although he constantly denies political ambition. When he ran for president, you would not bet against him. "Nigeria has always lacked visionary leadership," he is closest to his statement of political intent. "There is no country in Africa that has the energy of here Nowhere, I tell you."
He is less timid of another ambition: his projects on Arsenal, a Premiership football team that he has been supporting for a long time. "I love Arsenal and I will definitely go there," he says in a neutral tone, as he discusses the latest model of the iPhone. He estimates that it is worth about $ 2 billion. Long frustrated by the club's decline under Arsene Wenger, the recently replaced manager, he says that as an owner, he would involve himself in rebuilding the team – "shredding in my own councils" as he says. "When I buy it, I have to adapt to the expectations of our supporters."
But first he has a refinery to build. "When you visit, you'll see what headache I'm talking about," he says of a project in which he sank more than $ 6 billion of his own money. "Once I'm done with this headache, I'll take football."
David Pilling is the editor of FT in Africa
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