What it’s like working for Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote

What is it like working for Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, with an estimated wealth of over $23 billion?

For Zambian entrepreneur Monica Musonda, it felt like earning an MBA. Before founding Java Foods, the company behind a successful range of instant noodles in Zambia, Musonda spent nearly four years working at the Dangote Group in Nigeria.

“It was great working with someone who’s just such an optimist – who is also very courageous – but who was really, really good at business,” she said in a recent interview with How we made it in Africa. “So instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars doing an MBA … it was the best learning I could have done.”

[Watch your full interview with Monica Musonda: How this entrepreneur built an instant noodles business]

Dangote built his business empire from a modest start, using money borrowed from his uncle to trade in commodities like sugar, rice and pasta. Over the past five decades, he has transformed that trading outfit into a pan-African industrial conglomerate with interests in cement, food, and oil refining.

Musonda first met him while working as a lawyer at the International Finance Corporation in Washington, DC, at a time when the institution was providing financing for one of his cement plants. “We just got talking,” she said, “and [he] really questioned why I was sitting in Washington when there was so much work to do in Africa.”

This led to Musonda eventually joining Dangote Group in Lagos.

In an earlier talk at Lagos Business School, Dangote described his hectic schedule. When attending business meetings or conferences in other countries, he can’t afford to waste time. “Sometimes I go all the way from here [Nigeria] to China, and spend only five hours in China and come back,” explained Dangote. “That’s why I don’t take my private jet to China because the pilots need hours to rest, and the hours that they need, which is nine hours to rest, I don’t have nine hours. So I have to take Emirates.”

[Read more: The hectic schedule of Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote]

Musonda said this is reflective of the way he operated. “He was always in a hurry to get stuff done. When you have the energy, you must, right? And I think it’s very much the case for many of the African industrialists today. I think you use your private jet because you want to do many countries at the same time, but also it has its limitations when you have such long distances to travel.”

She credits Dangote with giving her the confidence to strike out on her own, saying his ability to see opportunity where others saw risk left a lasting impression. “[He] gave me courage. [He] made me see things … Lots of people look at the continent, [and] think, oh my goodness, all these problems. But he was such an African optimist.”

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