Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote’s fortune hits $55.4bn

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote’s net worth rose to $55.4 billion on Thursday after shares of his Dangote Cement Plc climbed to a record, making the cement maker Nigeria’s most valuable listed company again.

The figure, from the Forbes real-time billionaires list, is up from $53.2 billion on Monday. Dangote, 69, is Africa’s richest person.

Dangote Cement rose 5.8%, or ₦78.10, to close at ₦1,420 on the Nigerian Exchange in Lagos. That gave the company a market value of ₦23.96 trillion ($17.6 billion), ahead of the ₦23.68 trillion ($17.3 billion) value of Airtel Africa Plc, the mobile operator controlled by India’s Bharti Airtel, at its last Lagos price of ₦6,300 a share.

Airtel Africa had been the largest company on the Nigerian Exchange since July, when a rally in its shares lifted its value above ₦21 trillion. Its stock has not moved in Lagos since mid-August.

Stake worth $15.2 billion

Dangote owns about 14.65 billion Dangote Cement shares, or roughly 86.8% of the company, mainly through Dangote Industries Ltd., the holding company he controls, plus a small direct stake. At Thursday’s close, those shares were worth ₦20.8 trillion ($15.2 billion) at the official exchange rate of ₦1,365 to the dollar.

Thursday’s gain alone added ₦1.14 trillion ($838 million) to the value of the stake. Since last Friday, when the stock closed at ₦1,111, it has risen almost 28% and added about ₦4.53 trillion ($3.3 billion) to his holding.

The shares have more than doubled this year. Dangote Cement started 2026 at ₦609, when Dangote’s stake was worth about ₦8.92 trillion ($6.5 billion). The company now makes up about 14.5% of the ₦164.97 trillion ($120.9 billion) value of all stocks listed in Lagos, which closed at a record on Thursday as the All-Share Index rose 0.47% to 254,083.02 points.

Because Dangote Industries holds such a large share of the company, only a small part of Dangote Cement trades freely, so concentrated buying can move the price sharply. The stock jumped by close to the 10% daily limit on Oct. 23, Oct. 26 and Oct. 27 before the latest gain.

Debt-free balance sheet

Investors have been buying the shares ahead of and after the company’s nine-month results. Profit after tax rose 31% to ₦974.8 billion ($714 million) in the first nine months of the year, revenue grew 19.6% to ₦3.77 trillion ($2.76 billion), and the company repaid enough loans to end September with net cash of ₦51.1 billion.

Dangote Cement is also preparing a secondary listing in London, which shareholders approved in July. Existing investors could sell about 10% of the company in that deal, while the shares keep their primary listing in Lagos.

The cement maker is the largest listed piece of a fortune that Dangote built in cement, sugar, salt and flour before moving into fertiliser and oil refining. His Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE closed Nigeria’s largest initial public offering on Tuesday, after offering 4.1 billion new shares at ₦525 each to raise about ₦2.15 trillion ($1.58 billion). He owns about 87% of the refinery near Lagos, which is expected to start trading on the Nigerian Exchange in December.

The refinery has driven most of the rise in his fortune this year. His net worth jumped by about $20 billion in September, after a $2.5 billion private share placement put a higher value on his refinery stake. He was worth $25.6 billion at the end of 2025.