“If you don’t have ambition, you shouldn’t be alive.” Chairman and CEO, Dangote Group Born: April 10, 1957, Kano, Nigeria Education: Degree in business, Al-Azhar University, Cairo Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, built his fortune in two distinct phases, riding the changes that led to Nigeria’s becoming the continent’s largest economy. Expanding his empire from his native country to West Africa, and then across sub-Saharan Africa from Ethiopia to South Africa, Dangote showed that it was possible to create wealth in the region by means other than tapping the continent’s abundant natural resources. Bloomberg estimates his fortune to be $24.5 billion. Dangote comes from an old merchant family in Kano, in northern Nigeria, that made its first money exporting kola and ground nuts. He started with a small food-trading company in 1977 after completing his university studies. Bankrolled with a $3,000 loan from an uncle, the entrepreneur built a soft-commodities import and tr