Lagos Business School - Doing Business in Africa: Dangote Shares Experience at LBS

[LBS]

Winner of the African Business Leader of the Year Award and Founder and CEO of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote was at Lagos Business School today, to share his experience of managing businesses in Africa with participants as a part of an entrepreneurship course.

Dangote Group is the biggest quoted company in West Africa and the only Nigerian company on the Forbes Global 2000 Companies. It has 13 subsidiaries spread all over Nigeria with operations in 13 other African countries.

During the session which lasted over three hours, participants who were mostly chief executives and owner managers of companies, wanted to know how the Group had accomplished outstanding results, in spite of the socioeconomic and infrastructural challenges in the Nigerian economy.

Dangote said: "We are able to grow the businesses because we were very determined, we knew where we were going and we had a vision".

He explained that many people make the mistake of starting businesses without having any vision.

The other factors attributed to the success of the Group, he said, were in taking calculated risks, investing, and diversifying the business.

He said: "We have taken quite a lot of risks, but it's also the sheer amount of money that we keep investing, because we believe in what we are doing".

To foreign investors and aspiring entrepreneurs, his advice is that Africa and Asia offer opportunities for doing business with high returns on investment, but Nigeria, he believes, is still the best place in the world to invest.

"We believe in Nigeria, and that is why we are investing", he said.

The African Business Leader of the Year Award was presented to Alhaji Dangote in June this year by the African Business Magazine, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Business Council, and Business in Africa Events, in recognition of his efforts as a driver of change.

Via: Lagos Business School (LBS)