Yet to read it. But I'll quickly drop this comment - Dangote for President 😁
Edit: Finally read it. Yes. Dangote has his issues no doubt. Major issues. But the main reason why I'm a fanboy is primarily because of the topic hechooses to highlight - The Industrialization of the African Continent.
The Industrialization of Africa is an imperative. It's something that we must do if we're to be taken seriously. The descendants of people whose ancestors were conquered en masse because of the industrial revolution should not be sitting back and be thinking of laissez faire economics. Industrialization is a must.
Prior to Dangote, barely anyone in Africa was talking about it. Everyone was stuck on the whole neoliberal kool aid of "let the market decide".
Now with someone like Dangote preaching the industrialization imperative left, right, and center it has now become top of mind. And people, like you, can now analyse his approach and point out where his failings are.
Ultimately, if we're looking at progress towards industrialisation, Dangote's presence is a plus. Not a minus. It might be a plus 1 as opposed to plus 5, but it is still a plus regardless. Better to have a Dangote refinery that isn't optimal than to have no refinery at all. At least with the refinery on ground, we can talk of policy choices to steer it in the right direction. You won't have that if there is nothing on ground and we were all waiting for "the market to decide".
Cullinan, Frasch, Blaustein and others didn't leave Standard Oil to be generous. They left because they and the firm had built something worth leveraging, and a competitive market outside was willing to reward the leverage. For Dangote, the question isn't just "where is the diaspora", it's what would have created the pressure to build something worth diffusing in the first place.
It's worth noting what Dangote has clearly figured out: reading the political landscape accurately, building protection that proved durable, scaling at a pace most firms don't manage. Those are real capabilities. The sadder part of the Rockefeller comparison is the counterfactual: what if the same drive and scale were applied to competitive markets, with performance conditions?
Political protection without competitive discipline removes the pressure to build something worth diffusing. There's nothing to leverage out, because there was never an incentive to build it in. The talent, as you observe, was imported.
The Asian Tiger line is worth following further. The chaebol were also politically connected and protected. What was different was the attached export condition. Korean firms had to prove they could compete internationally, or they would lose the licence. That external discipline created the capability-investment pressure that the domestic market couldn't generate.
The harder part of that comparison is whether the condition was the cause or whether governments able to impose and hold it were already different in kind. A Nigerian state that could enforce an export-performance requirement on Dangote would be a different kind of state from the one that issued the licence.
That gap is the harder problem, and probably the one Opalo's question is really pushing at.
He spends a considerable amount of resources buying influence in governments. So it is also a story of the tail wagging the dog. When you look at how the refinery was conceived and executed, it was clearly aimed at making it too big to fail and to tie the country into his orbit. There were multiple visits by the presidency while the project was at sand filling stage. It was commissioned multiple times.
Exactly. The buck stops at the government's table, not Dangote's. The state has refused to impose export discipline or any kind of competition on his industries. And he, like any other businessman with no constraints, has taken the path of least resistance.
The Nigerian state is culpable. Weak states get captured. But Dangote isn't a passive beneficiary. He lobbied for import bans, sued to block fuel competition, and holds limestone concessions far beyond his needs. That's not 'the government allowed him.' That's 'he shaped what the government allowed.'
The 'blame the state' frame lets him off too easy. Every oligarch in history had a weak state to work with. The question is whether his model builds an industrial base or a personal empire. A fuel price swing, cement cheaper abroad than at home, and wages falling while profits treble tell you this man's story. The state failed. He actively widened the gap. Both can be true. But only one of them is selling it as national industrialization.
The argument that Aliko Dangote is "no Rockefeller" or "Asian Tiger" misses the forest for the trees. It confuses a businessman’s fierce competitive tactics with his macroeconomic impact. You do not have to view Dangote as a saint to recognize him as a historic industrialist. In fact, history shows that industrialization is almost always driven by exactly this kind of ruthless ambition.
Industrialization isn't measured by motives; it is measured by factories built, import dependencies broken, and supply chains localized. By transforming Nigeria from a consumer economy into a manufacturing powerhouse for cement, fertilizer, and refined petroleum, Dangote is doing exactly what the Rockefellers and Asian Tigers did before him.
State-protected rent extraction with industrial aesthetics. The 'forest' here is a single tree: Dangote, growing in a carefully cleared field where competition was uprooted, not a diverse industrial ecosystem. Real industrialization requires contestable markets, not permanent infant-industry protection for adult conglomerates.
Rockefeller was also described as a 'ruthless cutthroat capitalist' and a monopolist that drove competitors out of business. In your post today, He's Saint Rockefeller. I guess it's a matter of time. Stand well first (by any means), then work on the part that will make history see you as the benevolent one. Aliko will get there. And headhunting is an accepted business practice, so if Dangote decides to poach Feyi as Chief Strategy Officer tomorrow, no one should vex
Yet to read it. But I'll quickly drop this comment - Dangote for President 😁
Edit: Finally read it. Yes. Dangote has his issues no doubt. Major issues. But the main reason why I'm a fanboy is primarily because of the topic hechooses to highlight - The Industrialization of the African Continent.
The Industrialization of Africa is an imperative. It's something that we must do if we're to be taken seriously. The descendants of people whose ancestors were conquered en masse because of the industrial revolution should not be sitting back and be thinking of laissez faire economics. Industrialization is a must.
Prior to Dangote, barely anyone in Africa was talking about it. Everyone was stuck on the whole neoliberal kool aid of "let the market decide".
Now with someone like Dangote preaching the industrialization imperative left, right, and center it has now become top of mind. And people, like you, can now analyse his approach and point out where his failings are.
Ultimately, if we're looking at progress towards industrialisation, Dangote's presence is a plus. Not a minus. It might be a plus 1 as opposed to plus 5, but it is still a plus regardless. Better to have a Dangote refinery that isn't optimal than to have no refinery at all. At least with the refinery on ground, we can talk of policy choices to steer it in the right direction. You won't have that if there is nothing on ground and we were all waiting for "the market to decide".
Cullinan, Frasch, Blaustein and others didn't leave Standard Oil to be generous. They left because they and the firm had built something worth leveraging, and a competitive market outside was willing to reward the leverage. For Dangote, the question isn't just "where is the diaspora", it's what would have created the pressure to build something worth diffusing in the first place.
It's worth noting what Dangote has clearly figured out: reading the political landscape accurately, building protection that proved durable, scaling at a pace most firms don't manage. Those are real capabilities. The sadder part of the Rockefeller comparison is the counterfactual: what if the same drive and scale were applied to competitive markets, with performance conditions?
Political protection without competitive discipline removes the pressure to build something worth diffusing. There's nothing to leverage out, because there was never an incentive to build it in. The talent, as you observe, was imported.
The Asian Tiger line is worth following further. The chaebol were also politically connected and protected. What was different was the attached export condition. Korean firms had to prove they could compete internationally, or they would lose the licence. That external discipline created the capability-investment pressure that the domestic market couldn't generate.
The harder part of that comparison is whether the condition was the cause or whether governments able to impose and hold it were already different in kind. A Nigerian state that could enforce an export-performance requirement on Dangote would be a different kind of state from the one that issued the licence.
That gap is the harder problem, and probably the one Opalo's question is really pushing at.
He spends a considerable amount of resources buying influence in governments. So it is also a story of the tail wagging the dog. When you look at how the refinery was conceived and executed, it was clearly aimed at making it too big to fail and to tie the country into his orbit. There were multiple visits by the presidency while the project was at sand filling stage. It was commissioned multiple times.
And for the actual building and technology? The Chinese did all of that https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3352256/fuelling-continent-how-chinas-engineering-prowess-built-africas-biggest-oil-refinery
Exactly. The buck stops at the government's table, not Dangote's. The state has refused to impose export discipline or any kind of competition on his industries. And he, like any other businessman with no constraints, has taken the path of least resistance.
The Nigerian state is culpable. Weak states get captured. But Dangote isn't a passive beneficiary. He lobbied for import bans, sued to block fuel competition, and holds limestone concessions far beyond his needs. That's not 'the government allowed him.' That's 'he shaped what the government allowed.'
The 'blame the state' frame lets him off too easy. Every oligarch in history had a weak state to work with. The question is whether his model builds an industrial base or a personal empire. A fuel price swing, cement cheaper abroad than at home, and wages falling while profits treble tell you this man's story. The state failed. He actively widened the gap. Both can be true. But only one of them is selling it as national industrialization.
The argument that Aliko Dangote is "no Rockefeller" or "Asian Tiger" misses the forest for the trees. It confuses a businessman’s fierce competitive tactics with his macroeconomic impact. You do not have to view Dangote as a saint to recognize him as a historic industrialist. In fact, history shows that industrialization is almost always driven by exactly this kind of ruthless ambition.
Industrialization isn't measured by motives; it is measured by factories built, import dependencies broken, and supply chains localized. By transforming Nigeria from a consumer economy into a manufacturing powerhouse for cement, fertilizer, and refined petroleum, Dangote is doing exactly what the Rockefellers and Asian Tigers did before him.
hIsToRiC iNdUstRiALisT 🥴🥴
State-protected rent extraction with industrial aesthetics. The 'forest' here is a single tree: Dangote, growing in a carefully cleared field where competition was uprooted, not a diverse industrial ecosystem. Real industrialization requires contestable markets, not permanent infant-industry protection for adult conglomerates.
Rockefeller was also described as a 'ruthless cutthroat capitalist' and a monopolist that drove competitors out of business. In your post today, He's Saint Rockefeller. I guess it's a matter of time. Stand well first (by any means), then work on the part that will make history see you as the benevolent one. Aliko will get there. And headhunting is an accepted business practice, so if Dangote decides to poach Feyi as Chief Strategy Officer tomorrow, no one should vex