AFRICA HAS TOO MANY RICH MEN AND TOO FEW CAPITALISTS

On Wednesday, Aliko Dangote stood in Lamu, Kenya, alongside African leaders and broke ground on a $16 billion oil refinery. The proposed plant will process 700,000 barrels of crude a day, include a 1,000MW power plant and, if completed as planned, rank among the largest refineries in the world.

Think about that.

Sixteen billion dollars. One African businessman. One African project.

That is why I have long argued that Dangote is a godsend for this continent.

Not because billionaires are saints—the Lamu project already faces legitimate land and environmental questions. But because he represents something Africa has in desperately short supply: indigenous capital willing to make bets at continental scale.

Countries are only as viable as their private sectors.

Governments can publish Vision 2040s and industrial policies. Eventually somebody has to write a cheque, build the factory, hire engineers, organise supply chains and wait years for a return.

Businesses, not governments, create wealth, jobs and goods and services. The role of government is to create an economic and legal environment in which more of those businesses can emerge and grow. We have more examples than I have space in this column to list the failed government businesses even in this NRM administration.

For years this column has argued that Africa is not poor. It is a deep-value play whose people, minerals, land and markets are consistently undervalued by bad politics, weak business skills and foreign risk models.

"Foreign capital sees political risk, currency risk, infrastructure gaps and regulatory uncertainty.

The spreadsheet says: run.

Dangote sees the same risks, but he has skin in the game...

That distinction matters. In 2024, writing about Uganda’s infrastructure financing, I argued that local investors often have a more nuanced understanding of African risk. What looks impossible from a London boardroom may be manageable if you understand the politics, people and terrain.

Dangote is that thesis on steroids.

There is another part of the story we underestimate. His commercial software is multigenerational. His great-grandfather, Alhassan Dantata, was among West Africa’s wealthiest traders. Dangote did not start at zero.

But the inheritance was more than money.

It was software.

How to judge risk. Negotiate. Preserve capital. Talk to bankers. Work through government. Reinvest. Survive reversals. Think in decades.

Wealth may be built in one generation and squandered by the third, but Dangote had flipped the script. Each generation appears to have built on what came before.

"That accumulated commercial intelligence now sits on top of a balance sheet large enough to underwrite ventures that would terrify most African governments—or put enough equity on the table for international money men to take notice.

He also straddles two worlds. He speaks the language of international capital—project finance, technical partners, equity, listings and return on capital, while navigating African governments, bureaucracies and the patronage systems surrounding large projects.

That brings us to an uncomfortable point.

Government support for big business is not automatically corruption.

I argued in 2020 that concessions can stimulate development if they back credible businesses, measurable outcomes and strategic industries. The problem is that support is too often handed to connected individuals with neither the competence nor intention to build anything.

The answer is not to stop backing winners.

It is to stop backing cronies.

Asia understood this better. Its governments helped create industrial champions, but eventually those champions had to export, compete and conquer markets. Africa too often protects rent-seekers instead of builders.

Dangote’s greatest achievement may therefore not be cement, fertiliser or even oil.

It may be confidence.

His Lagos refinery shattered a psychological ceiling. Projects of that scale were supposed to be built by multinationals, Gulf sovereigns or Chinese state companies. An African industrialist was supposed to trade, import, distribute and perhaps put up a respectable factory.

Dangote decided otherwise.

Now he is trying to reproduce the model in East Africa.

Success markets itself. Once investors see Africans successfully executing projects at this scale, they begin imagining steel mills, fertiliser plants, rail corridors and other mega-projects. Capital compounds, but confidence compounds too.

Africa therefore needs more Dangotes.

Not more rich men.

There is a difference.

A rich man wants to show that he has money. A capitalist wants to deploy money so it comes back with friends.

"A rich man measures success in VXs, mansions and little brown girls in tow. A capitalist measures it in productive assets, cashflows, factories and return on capital...

One consumes wealth.

The other reproduces it.

The tragedy of Africa is not that we have too many billionaires. It is that we have too few people whose ambitions have graduated from consumption to production and from national markets to continental ones.

Our governments should align development ambitions with indigenous capital while creating the conditions for larger African balance sheets: predictable policy, property rights, capital markets, patient finance and integrated regional markets.

Dangote will make enormous amounts of money if Lamu works.

Good.

If his billions come alongside jobs, skills, taxes, suppliers, infrastructure and cheaper energy, that is not a contradiction.

That is the bargain.

Capital makes money. Citizens live better.

"Our real failure would be to meet here again in 30 years and discover that Africa still has only one Dangote...