The President, Dangote Group, Aliko
Dangote, has been named among the 50 world’s most influential
personalities by Bloomberg, the renowned United States-based news media
with bias for business and financial news reporting.
The personalities chosen by the
Bloomberg Market consisted of CEOs, world leaders as well as religious
leaders. As expected, US President, Barack Obama; German Chancellor,
Angela Merkel; and Pope Francis made the list, with Dangote ranked 41st.
According to Bloomberg, those on the
list “build companies and assemble fortunes. They run banks, or hope to
disrupt them. They shape economies and spread ideas. They manage money
and wield the clout that goes with the billions of dollars they invest.”
On
Dangote, Bloomberg stated, “Africa’s most successful businessman built
his fortune in sugar, textiles and cement in his native Nigeria, where
today he’s a political as well as a financial power broker. He’s
expanding in other countries and may list his cement company in London.”
Paul Wallace of the media outfit wrote,
“Dangote is feted like royalty. He has businesses ranging from cement to
sugar to energy in a dozen sub-Saharan countries. He’s a fixture at
elite gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
No African has ridden the continent’s halting march out of poverty
toward potential prosperity as spectacularly as its richest person, the
Nigerian industrialist, Aliko Dangote.
“Dangote’s clout extends beyond the
boardroom and the high-flier dinner circuit. In March, as votes were
tallied in Nigeria’s presidential election, Dangote, 58, served as an
intermediary between the camps of the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, and
the ultimate winner of the election, Muhammadu Buhari.”
“There’s no question that he is quite an
exceptional person—not only in Africa but globally,” says Mark Mobius,
chairman of the emerging-markets group at Franklin Templeton
Investments.
Speaking at the Financial Times Africa
Summit in London on Sunday, Dangote had expressed confidence that
Nigeria would weather the oil shock that had decimated government
revenues if it stepped up the fight against corruption.
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