When Aliko Dangote announced plans to construct a giant oil refinery on a swamp outside Lagos more than a decade ago, few believed he could do what successive Nigerian governments had tried and failed to do over half a century.
Today the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, which cost $20bn to build and is the biggest of its kind in the world, is not only operational, but profiting handsomely from the disruption to global oil product supplies caused by the war in Iran.
Its success has catapulted Dangote, who was already the most important industrialist in Africa and the wealthiest Black person in the world, into another league. His personal fortune is now estimated at $30.4bn, putting him above the likes of Lakshmi Mittal and Peter Thiel on the Forbes rich list of global billionaires and making him one of the few African business leaders who can turn heads at Davos.