Dangote family office prioritises value-added exports over raw commodities

Halima Dangote, group executive director for the Dangote Family Office and its international offices in Dubai and London, said the conglomerate built by her father, billionaire Aliko Dangote, is pushing further into refined and processed goods as it looks to sell higher-margin products abroad rather than raw materials.

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Jennifer Zabasajja, Dangote said the group is broadening its portfolio well beyond its traditional strongholds of cement and sugar.

“On our core products and everything that we do, but we are really ready to diversify, we are diversifying,” she said. “You can see from cement, sugar, salt. We’re doing refined products and fertiliser.”

The strategy centres on capturing more value domestically before goods leave Nigeria, she said, rather than shipping out unprocessed inputs that are refined elsewhere.

“If you look at it, we want to export value. That’s what we want to do,” Dangote said. “We don’t want to export food oil. We want to manufacture it and produce refined products. We don’t want to export limestone. We want to make cement. We don’t want to export anything that is not valuable. We have to refine it.”

The company’s $19 billion refinery in Lagos, one of the largest single-train refineries in the world, has already begun shifting Nigeria from a net importer of petroleum products toward a potential exporter of refined fuel.

The group has signalled similar ambitions in fertiliser, where it operates one of Africa’s largest production plants, and in petrochemicals.

Dangote framed the strategy as part of a wider goal of building capacity at home, extending even beyond industrial output.

“Even if it is education, let’s have it here,” she said. “Then we can sort of feed the world.”