Dangote, the capitalist who wants to transform Africa

Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Africa, has been repeating the same idea for years at the economic forums where he is invited: the continent will continue to be dependent as long as it is limited to exporting raw materials without transformation. That is why he launched a refinery in his country, Nigeria, a project that aims to transform a large part of the African energy market. The total cost was close to 20 billion dollars, paid mainly by his company, and it has been operational since January 2024.Few debates spark as much tension in Africa as the price of gasoline. With states that often offer few public services and very limited social protection systems, fuel subsidies have become one of the few visible forms of state support. When the price of gasoline rises, the cost of transport, food, and daily life immediately increases. This is why many governments maintain costly subsidies even if they end up unbalancing public finances. As in so many places, subsidies are the most elegant way to avoid facing a difficult structural problem to solve. Nigeria, one of the continent's major oil producers, has gone decades without sufficient capacity to refine its own crude. The lack of functional infrastructure forced the import of fuel at high prices while the state absorbed part of the cost to avoid social unrest. The business primarily benefited gasoline importers, many of them linked to the country's elites. A cement giant

Dangote is part of these elites. He made a fortune in the cement market in the early 2000s, partly thanks to a protected market and his good relations with the government. He then diversified his income by investing in the food sector, and in recent years has focused on energy and fertilizers. In May 2024, the President of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, announced the withdrawal of gasoline subsidies and the devaluation of the Nigerian currency. Energy and food prices soared, and the poorest Nigerians are still recovering from the shock; the new infrastructure has allowed the country to start consuming locally refined gasoline. While in other African countries prices are soaring and there is a shortage of gasoline due to the conflict in the Middle East, in Nigeria – for the moment – there are no supply problems. Dangote has already announced his next goal: that his refinery will double its capacity and be the largest in the world. With his industrial activity, he wants to replace imports that have turned Africa into a territory that lives by consuming what is manufactured abroad. He will face local elites who live by distributing these imports. “I never imagined that the oil mafia is worse than the drug mafia”, he said on one occasion, given the difficulties he had encountered in starting up his refinery. For his critics, Dangote represents the risk that a single private fortune accumulates excessive power over strategic sectors. For his followers, it is the opportunity to launch projects that states have neglected for decades. For the moment, the war in Iran has generated more markets for him in Europe, where airlines buy fuel from him, and it is opening more doors for him across the continent: Kenya and Tanzania; in East Africa they are already fighting to be the country where Dangote builds the next refinery.