I have noted repeatedly that the most important business unit within the Dangote Group is not cement, sugar, fertilizer, or even the refinery; it is logistics. That logistics backbone is the One Oasis upon which the conglomerate has built its competitive moats. In a nation where the supply chain architecture struggles, following the collapse of the railways and the weakening of postal systems, owning logistics is equivalent to owning the arteries through which commerce flows.
Intellectual property strategist Freddy Guemeni deepened this thesis in his piece for IP Business Academy, introducing the concept of “Capability IP.” He describes it as a fusion of assets, processes, and know-how that, while not protected by patents, becomes functionally exclusive because no competitor can realistically replicate it within the same operating environment.
In the Dangote universe, this capability IP is unmistakable: a logistics and supply chain machinery originally optimized for cement, but now powering sugar, salt, flour, fertilizers, and increasingly refined petroleum products. Dangote’s edge does not emerge from having the most sophisticated cement formula; rather, the moat is the reusable logistics oasis, a capability that can be ported across sectors, delivering efficiencies and pricing leverage competitors cannot match.
As I explained in Harvard Business Review when proposing the One Oasis Strategy, when a firm invests in, and continually deepens its oasis, it unlocks multiple paths for capturing value. That oasis becomes a platform, and a capability generating returns across many business lines.
By framing this as “IP,” Freddy advances the argument that a business model anchored on a One Oasis Strategy can deliver returns equivalent to classical intellectual property, because the capability itself becomes defensible, unique, and commercially irreplicable.
Good People, in modern business, patents may expire and products may be copied. But capability-based moats (i.e. operational IP as we have in Dangote Group) endure, because they are built over decades, accumulated through knowledge, perfected through execution, and made exclusive by the very terrain in which they operate.
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Dangote is an institution, the unfortunate thing is that we are not learning enough from him. A state can offer access and even capital, but no state offers knowhow and capabilities, and that is the lens through which we must understand what Dangote has accomplished. The thinking is ecosystem, and not being comfortable with making good margins from an aspect of economic activity.
In our power sector, the equivalent of what Dangote has done will entail a group owning a GenCo, a DisCo, and then get government to enable it build out the transmission lines within its spheres of operations, and it will also own a meter manufacturing arm; it can go further back to own a gas processing plant. It looks unthinkable but that’s the equivalent of what Dangote has accomplished. How many business people and investors think at this level and possess the capacity to get it done? You cannot do profound things across sectoral lines if you think in bits, it must be ecosystem-like and comprehensive.
Dangote has provided the template, and it’s something that can be replicated in different sectors; but you have to possess both the depth and height of thinking to see the big picture and go all in. All thanks to Dangote for showing what is possible.