FROM TRADING TO MANUFACTURING: HIGHPOINTS TO NOTE ON ACHIEVING GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS BY ALIKO DANGOTE, AFRICA'S RICHEST MAN 

Did you know that the reason Aliko Dangote, President of the Dangote Group, switched from trading to manufacturing is to add value and build a sustainable legacy for the coming generations?

Mr. Aliko Dangote is the President of the Dangote Group, the largest conglomerate in West Africa and one of the largest on the African continent that employs more than 30,000 people and generating revenue in excess of US$4.1 billion as of 2017.

Dangote, who started out as a trader on commodities, admitted that trading is less risky than manufacturing, but he chooses to invest in manufacturing because "Somebody who is trading has a simple lifestyle: he sits in his office and order goods, they arrive and he sells without adding any value. But for manufacturing, you are creating value for yourself, for the society, for the country, and for everybody."

If you are thinking of moving to where the big sharks are (manufacturing), here are some highpoints from the richest man in Africa, which are extracts from a fire chat interview with an Economist, Dr. Doyin Salami, during the High-Level Roundtable Discussion on Industrialisation in Africa to heralds the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), and as published on ThisDay by Dike Onwuamaeze:

➡️ Global competitiveness is synonymous with quality:

"To be really globally competitive we must produce very high-quality products and we have to produce them at the cheapest cost possible. Others have been there before us if you look at the Asian tigers, but I know that it is never late because this can actually be done."

➡️ Global competition begins with meeting local demands:

"What I think we need to do is to concentrate first on meeting our own domestic demand, by producing high quality at the lowest price. If we do this we will be able to export to other countries and get their markets. That was what the Asian tigers did."

➡️ Investing in quality:

"When we decided that we want to make Nigeria self-sufficient in cement, what we did, knowing that people will challenge us in terms of quality, was to start by investing heavily in technology to make sure that whatever that we want to produce in terms of quality is possible, so that if the foreign markets open up we will be able to compete both in terms of quality and pricing."

➡️ Have the right pricing:

"...if your pricing is not right there is nothing you can do because no one is going to buy your product."

➡️ Don't rely on costly materials if you are to be competitive:

"If we had relied on importing wheat to produce flour and pasta, that business would have folded because we are not going to be competitive relying on the international price of wheat. So, we are not touching anything that we cannot achieve through local backward integration to produce and export."

➡️ Stable government policies are needed to be globally competitive:

"Before I started manufacturing I do not have a single gray hair. But you have to check why other entrepreneurs before us that tried manufacturing were not really very successful? For manufacturing, you will need very stable government policies. You need to have electricity. These two things are the most important... Government has to do quite a lot in terms of having the political will to remove...bottlenecks [poor power, transport, border infrastructures]"

➡️ With manufacturing you add value and build legacy:

"For me, it is better that I go into manufacturing than trading. Trading does not add value and is just a temporary thing because one can be trading today and tomorrow decides to shut down his shop. But manufacturing is where you will create massive jobs and also leave a legacy, and the whole thing for me is to build something that I should leave as a legacy to future generations...you are creating value for yourself, for the society, for the country, and for everybody."

Image credit: TIME Magazine

Source:

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2021/09/09/dangote-why-i-dumped-trading-for-manufacturing/