“Don’t kill the competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you the entrepreneur on your toes.” – Aliko Dangote Despite the strengths of conglomerates, they can be challenged by anyone that can master what they do. The conglomerates accumulate capabilities and they use them to compete. I will use an illustration of a Nigerian company that took […]
2.2 – Dangote Conglomerate Tax
“Manufacture, don’t just trade. There is money in manufacturing even though it is capital intensive. To achieve a big breakthrough, I had to start manufacturing the same product I was trading on; which is commodities.” – Aliko Dangote Dangote Group is one of the most successful companies in Africa. It has the operational quality and scale […]
2.1 – Winning Through Accumulation of Capabilities
“Nigeria is one of the best-kept secrets…A lot of foreigners are not investing because they’re waiting for the right time. There is no right time.” – Aliko Dangote Companies win by accumulating capabilities. From Google to Dangote Group, when companies accumulate capabilities, they operate in domains that generate higher value, usually upstream, compared with where […]
1.3 – Aliko Dangote
“I built a conglomerate and emerged the richest black man in the world in 2008 but it didn’t happen overnight. It took me 30 years to get to where I am today. Youths of today aspire to be like me but they want to achieve it overnight. It’s not going to work. To build a […]
1.2 – Five Phases of Building Great Companies
‘‘We [Dangote Group] are not doing like other Africans who keep most of their money in the bank. We do not keep money in the bank. We fully invest whatever we have and we keep on investing. ’’ – Aliko Dangote To create companies with capacities to fix market frictions, many things are needed. We […]



