Aliko Dangote: Building Africa's industrial future from the ground up
In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen
Norges Bank Investment Management
4.7 • 236 Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nicolai Tangen sits down with Aliko Dangote, Founder and CEO of the Dangote Group, Africa's largest industrial conglomerate, to explore his journey from a small Lagos trading firm to a sprawling empire spanning cement, fertiliser, petrochemicals, and the world's largest single-train oil refinery. They discuss overcoming fierce opposition, Africa's infrastructure challenges, and why its booming youth population signals enormous opportunity. Dangote's mission? Pioneering the industrialisation of an entire continent. Tune in for an insightful conversation!
In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday.
The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Karoline Woie.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everybody. I'm Nicola Tangan, the CEO of the Norwegian Southern Wealth Fund, and today I have a real pressure sitting down with Aliko Dengote. |
| 0:08.3 | Aliko is the founder and the CEO of the Dengote Group, Africa's largest industrial conglomerate. |
| 0:14.5 | Nearly 50 years ago, he started with a small trading firm in Nigeria, and today his empire stretches across the continent. He has built what many |
| 0:23.0 | said was impossible, a large scale African industry from scratch. Warm welcome. |
| 0:28.9 | Thank you very much, Dr. It's a pleasure having you. It's great to be here. How did it all start? |
| 0:42.7 | Well, I started as a trading company in 1978. |
| 0:49.1 | And what kind of things did you trade? |
| 0:50.8 | Cement. |
| 0:52.0 | At that time, I started first with cement. |
| 0:54.0 | I was getting four or five trucks and trading |
| 0:57.2 | them there in legos and then later on now i got into fish into rice into sugar and uh you know we |
| 1:07.0 | started we continue to expand my first import of sugar was actually in 1980. |
| 1:13.4 | Wow. |
| 1:13.8 | You know, and everything was under import license. |
| 1:17.1 | So I got a license. |
| 1:18.8 | And you have family, I mean, your family had been into trading for several generations, right? |
| 1:23.5 | Several generations. |
| 1:24.2 | Your grand, your grandfather? |
| 1:25.6 | My great grand, you know, this, if you, from the maternal side, my mom's grandfather, |
| 1:33.3 | they call him Al-Hasand Dantata. |
| 1:35.8 | He was actually even trading, you know, Nigeria, Ghana, you know, and he died in |
| 1:42.4 | 1955 before I was born. |
... |
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