Recognize me if my tie was fixed. Leave it this way. All right. David i do not consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . David Aliko Dangote is known to be the wealthiest man in africa. Is that a title you are proud to have or one where you get people calling you for money, you wish you were not the wealthiest man in africa . Aliko first of all, thank you very much. It is great to be here. You know, when they call you the wealthiest person in africa, it comes with a lot of baggage. There are so many demands. People come up with different demands. It is good because i like to give back to the society. David you are involved in many philanthropic endeavors in africa and elsewhere. Lets go through some of them. Recently, you had an event in new york with mo ibraham, a wealthy african businessperson, and bill gates, in which you provided a fair amount of money for the African Center in harlem. What is the African Center and why did you do that . Aliko we did the African Center idea, it started with Chelsea Clinton and my daughter. My daughter joined them later. We realized that we need to make this African Center a reality to be able to project africa in a better light. You know, bring in africa to the rest of the world. Especially when you look at the United Nations general assembly, the entire world converges in new york. We want to tell the world a narrative of africa and tell the rest of the world what africa is all about. It has to do with policy, business, and culture. Sometimes, especially americans, they do not understand much about africa. Somebody will say, africans, what language do you speak . In africa, we speak about 2000 different languages. David that is a lot. One of the big problems in africa is health. You have been involved in trying to eradicate polio in nigeria along with bill gates and his foundation. What is the progress you have made . Aliko we have done quite a lot. The progress has been tremendous in the last three years. We have not had any real wild virus of polio. Hopefully, when we work between now and the next six months, we will be poliofree. That means the entire african continent will be poliofree. David one of the things you are doing is building a hospital in nigeria. Why do you feel a need to build a new hospital . Aliko i think we need to build a worldclass hospital because when you look at nigeria, we spend a lot of money where people go abroad for medical checkups, for operations. What you are trying to do is give hope to the population. Even if youd travel abroad, we will be able to treat you. David nigeria is the most populous country in africa. Is that right . Aliko it is. David it is growing at a large rate. Aliko about 3 . David at the current rate, at some point, more people will be in nigeria than the United States. Aliko by 2050, we will be at 450 million population. We will be number three, after china and india. David by 2050, you could be the thirdbiggest country by population. Does that make you nervous about whether nigeria can house and feed all these people . Aliko it does not make me nervous. We have massive land. We will have a lot of water. We have the right climate. The major contributors of our gdp are agriculture. We just need to tilt a bit and change from the oilreliant economy to agriculture. David nigeria is known for having a large oil deposits. Is that a major contributor to the nigerian economy . Is that the major source of wealth there . Aliko it contributes 90 of the Foreign Exchange that we have. 60 of it is coming from the oil. The government is doing a lot to try to diversify the economy. They are trying to structure their own taxes. We need to make more money from taxes. We are working hard to adjust these numbers. David as the wealthiest man in nigeria, do you get pressure to run for Political Office . Would you like to be president . Aliko i think i am doing a great job right now. I do not think i need to be in a political space. Some of us need to do lead in terms of the trajectory of the broken africa through business, not through political leadership. David lets talk about how you made this amount of money. This is by far the largest amount of money any individual has in africa. You came from a wealthy family or not a wealthy family . Aliko i came from a wealthy family. My late greatgrandfather in the 1940s was the richest west african. My late grandfather was one of the wealthiest nigerians. The family name is from my maternal side. My father was fairly rich, he was in business and also politics. One thing i am proud of, i did not inherit any money from my father. I built everything from scratch to where i am. David your father died when you were young. Aliko he died when i was eight years old. David he did not leave a large amount of money for you in his will . Aliko he left in the will, whatever i inherited from him, id give that to charities since then. David did you go to college in nigeria . Aliko i went in egypt. David what did you study . Aliko business. David you graduated at what age . Aliko i graduated at 20 years old. David you went back from egypt to nigeria. Did you get a job . What did you do . Aliko i worked with my uncle. Then i started my own business. Just by buying cement and selling. It was a lowkey business. David you are a trader. You are not making some meant. Cement. Re not making cement is your main business. Why is a cement a big part of africas wealth . Aliko when you look at cement, cement is what builds infrastructure. We need a lot of infrastructure. In nigeria, we have about 17,000 deficit in housing. It is all over africa. When we started cement in nigeria, we realized it was mostly imported. We went in there, it is a long story. David you were trading cement. Was it hard to get the money to keep the business going . Aliko it was not really hard. At that time, i was buying domestically. By 1980, we were importing rice, sugar, you know, commodities. The cement, i was doing local trading. It was not an importing business. We started the import in 2000. David you had a cement trading business. Somebody thought of buying it. You decided not to sell. They wanted control. You then decided to build your own cementmanufacturing business. Aliko i decided in 2003 to build my own cement. We started producing 5 million tons of cement. David what year was that . Aliko we started building at the end of 2003. We finished in 2007. David you are the largest cement manufacturer in nigeria. Aliko the largest cement manufacturer. David you are building a refinery. Why does nigeria need another refinery . Aliko we have only two working refineries. David the cement business is the core of your wealth and company. You are building other things. You are building a refinery. Why does nigeria need another refinery . Aliko let me give you a little bit of history. What we do with our group, we use businesses to build the future of the business. Like when we were in sugar, it was the sugar profits we used to build the cement. Now with cement, we are building so many things. Refineries, fertilizer, petroleum, and then also we are doing petro chemicals. With the refinery, the question is, why are we building a refinery . When you look at the entire side of africa, we have two working refineries. One is in south africa. The majority of these countries, they do not have refineries. They export oil, but they import products. We realized that the majority of the foreignexchange in nigeria was to petroleum for imports. David nigeria is exporting oil and has to buy Refined Oil Products back. What you are doing is building one of the largest refineries in the world. Aliko it is 650,000 barrels a day. David to do that, do you have to borrow money . Where did the money come from . Aliko what we are doing now, we are borrowing from the commercial banks. We are also borrowing from some Financial Institutions like the african bank. David Many Companies outside of africa would like to invest in africa. Where do you recommend they invest . Nigeria . South africa . Kenya . You are probably partial to nigeria. Are there good opportunities for nonafricans in africa . Aliko there are opportunities for everybody. I think there is protection for everybody. Let me give you an example. In nigeria, if i have a partnership with you, i will not have what you call minimum taxation. If the company is owned by myself alone, as a nigerian entity, we have a minimum taxation. There is a lot in terms of inviting foreigners to invest. Countries that i would suggest, one of them, nigeria, that is a good place to invest. Kenya is also a good place to invest. David i first met you a number of years ago. Today, the bloom seems to be off the rose in african private investing. It was very attractive six years ago. Today, it is less attractive. Is that because economies in africa have gone down . What would you say is the reason . Aliko i think most of that reason has to do with lack of understanding of where to invest. Look at the investments made, 90 of what we invested in has done well. I think it is where you should invest. Myself as an african, i cannot invest in every sector. I have to be choosy where i invest. There is a lot of wrong perception. People read stories from newspapers and believe what they are reading. I think, as we go along, there are quite a lot of changes in most african countries to try and change to focus on the economy. David how many people are there in lagos . Aliko we have 25 million. In terms of population, it is small. David getting around is not easy. Getting around new york is not easy either. When you get around, do you have special police cars . How did you get around . Aliko i get around, sometimes i have a police escort, but not all the time. David you drive yourself . Aliko yes i do. David do people say, there is the wealthiest man in africa driving himself . Aliko they do sometimes. David when you go to restaurants, do people come up for selfies or ask for money . Aliko they do not ask for money. Even here, when i go to places to eat, i get requests for selfies. It is normal. David you have some outside interests. One of them i think you are interested in the United States is what we call soccer, but other people call football. The arsenal team, is that a team you would like to buy . Aliko yes, i would like to buy someday. Today, we have 20 billion worth of projects. I think that is what i want to concentrate on. I am trying to finish building the company. After we finished, maybe sometime in 2021, you know david you are not buying a team right now . Aliko not right now. I am buying arsenal when i finish. I am trying to take the company to the next level. David what are the attributes you think you brought to the table which make you successful . Aliko the most important one, if you are going into any business, you must understand the business. You must know that business. David in terms of africa itself, are you bullish on africas prospects . As a place people can invest . Aliko i think i am bullish when it comes to africa. It is the main reason why today we have 20 billion to invest, which we will finish by the end of next year. In the next two years. I am very bullish. I have done very well in africa. If we continue with what we are doing today, based on our own projections, we will be in the next five years, in the fortune 500. David sometimes i see advertisements for dangote, your company. Is that just general brand building . Why do you advertise that for in the United States . Most of your businesses are not in the United States. Aliko it is brand building. We are not going to remain only in africa, we are going to invest outside africa. If you look at what you are building today, we have a company that has revenues of 4 billion. In the next two years, the company will have a revenue of 30 billion. That will create a lot of money. What we are trying to do is use a major part of that money and invest outside africa and maybe 40 we will invest in africa. David you are in your early 60s. Aliko i am 62. David that is pretty early 60s. Do you intend to do this for 10 years . 20 years . 30 years . Aliko i think i will maybe work or at least be active in the next 15 years. David suppose someone is watching this and wants to be a successful businessman in africa. What are the attributes you think you have brought to the table which make you successful . Intelligence . Hard work . Persistence . All of those things . What are the most important attributes . Aliko the most important one, if you are going into any business, you must understand the business. You must know that business. You should not invest because somebody will say, that is good money. You have to understand the business in and out. That is the different with me. That is the difference with me. I know my business in and out. You can wake me anytime and asked me about fertilizer, anything we are doing. The other thing is to work hard and you have to have the tenacity to continue. You have some hiccups here or there. You have to be focused in terms of what you are doing. David i never seem to get you to yell or scream. You seem very lowkey. You do not use the technique of yelling or screaming . To what do you attribute that . Aliko that is my nature. I am very quiet. I am very calm. I get upset sometimes when people try to outsmart me. I do not like people who will not tell me the truth. I like people to look at me and tell me the truth. David are you investing in the United States . Aliko we are going to start investing in the United States. We want to open a Family Office in new york and london. We have an office in london, which has been operating for 30 years. We want to turn part of that into a Family Office. I have discussed this with you before. Sometimes in africa, you have issues of devaluation. David sometimes wealthy people collect art, collect cars, collect other things. Some of your wealth, that you are not using for collect other things. Philanthr, do you collect things . Aliko i am not really a collector of art. When i have excess money, i put more terms of strategies. I do not have an expensive lifestyle. David the pleasure of your life is building your company and giving away extra money . Aliko that is my greatest pleasure in life. David it is a very good success story. I know a lot of people are wanting to know how you have done it. I guess you are saying it is hard work and persistence. A little luck from time to time. Aliko luck must be there. If there is no luck, you cannot make it. David thank you for coming today. I appreciate you giving us your insights. Aliko thank you so much. Sebastian coming up on bloomberg best, the stories that shaped the week in business around the world. Tensions between the u. S. And iran rise and fall. Market separate the signals from the noise. Tweets are one thing, actions or another. We are not talking about tensions that have gone away. Investors seem to be very optimistic. Sebastian the latest u. S. Jobs report and data to the drama. This does not in any way change any expectations about economic prospects or fed policy. Sebastian carlos ghosn pulls off an escae