Africa’s richest man alive, Aliko Dangote has revealed his plans of giving out a large part of his wealth to charity just like Bill Gates, the brain behind Microsoft.
Speaking at the 2019 Goalkeepers’ event hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New York, Dangote expressed his gratitude to Gates’ philanthropy which is well known in Africa specially Nigeria.
In his speech, Dangote thanked the Microsoft founder for making him a better person through his charity works across the world. Read below excerpt of Dangote’s speech;
“When I started my foundation in 1994, I never realized we had this massive challenge in the health sector. Really, it was mind-boggling when we had this agreement to collaborate with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and that really opened my eyes to realize that there are a lot of challenges in health.
At that time I didn’t have the opportunity of meeting Bill but meeting Bill changed me into a different person. This is somebody that has nothing to do with us in Africa or Nigeria but he is putting his money and his soul into everything.
He is very committed to helping humanity and that really surprises me a lot and I realized that he is a simple person and I never knew Bill would be this simple. He is a very soft-spoken guy and kind hearted.
It is very difficult to find people like Bill in this world. Bill, we are very grateful and I can assure you that with my association with Bill, my only prayer is that in the next few years, I will try and give my chunk of wealth to charity,” Dangote said.
About Aliko Dangote:
Aliko Dangote, an ethnic Hausa Muslim from Kano, Kano State, was born on the 10th of April 1957 into a wealthy Muslim family. He is the great-grandson of Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, the richest West African at the time of his death in 1955.
Aliko Dangote is a Nigerian businessman, investor, and owner of the Dangote Group, which has interests in commodities in Nigeria and other African countries. As of March 2019, he had an estimated net worth of US$10.6 billion.
Dangote is ranked by Forbes magazine as the 100th-richest person in the world and the richest man in Africa, and peaked on the list as the 23rd-richest person in the world as at 2014. He surpassed Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi in 2013 by over $2.6 billion to become the world’s richest person of African descent.
