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Africa’s richest person and Nigeria’s foremost entrepreneur, Aliko Dangote, 68, has retired as chairman of his eponymous cement company, Dangote Cement Plc, effective 25 July 2025. 

Emmanuel Ikazoboh, former group chairman of Ecobank Transnational Inc., will fill the role vacated by Dangote, whose daughter, Mariya Aliko Dangote, was also appointed to the Board of the cement company.

Bloomberg described Dangote Cement as the “bedrock” of Aliko Dangote’s business empire until he established his $20 billion oil refinery, which took 11 years to build. He will now devote more time to Dangote Refinery, which has a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) and is currently undergoing a modification to increase its capacity to 700,000 bpd, with the upgrade expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The refinery helped almost double Dangote’s wealth, which was valued at $28.5 billion on Friday, 25 July 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Dangote Cement has 52.0 million tonnes per annum (Mta) capacity across the African continent, with Nigeria accounting for 35.25Mta. Currently, additional greenfield plants are coming up in Cote D’Ivoire (3.0Mta) and Itori, Nigeria (6.0 Mta) and on completion this year will push total capacity to 61.0Mta, according to ThisDay reporting.