Day 4 – “Nothing is impossible”

Leslie: Aliko Dangote is one of the richest men in the world, and is the richest man in Africa. He’s a soft-spoken industrial man who appears obsessed with the details of the efficiency and productivity of his operations (his walls are papered with pictures of his plants) – less of a smooth-talking political operator or public speaker than one might expect of a CEO with a net worth of over $10 billion. During our meeting with him, he encouraged perseverance and hard work (he had a sign saying “Nothing is impossible” on his desk), like many entrepreneurs, but also shared specific targets he always sets for his investments (a 30% IRR, for example) and encouraged students to work in developing economies because of the wealth of opportunities in simple businesses there. His story of building large, value-added businesses in Nigeria was one of the trip highlights for me.

At Reeds, a delicious Thai restaurant (what a surprise!) in Lagos, we had a quick check-in on how the trip was going (well), and then it was off to a movie premiere. Photographers who didn’t know we weren’t famous ended up with a lot of great dramatic snaps of a group of business school tourists J.

One of the other trip highlights was also today, and that was meeting Onu’s wonderful family. It’s no surprise that our calm, happy, optimistic trip leader came from such warm, friendly people, but we were still overwhelmed by their hospitality, his mother’s amazing cooking (she made a feast of stews, meats, and rice), and his father’s silly jokes. We all agreed with Onu: this was one of the best nights of the trip – we really felt at home here in Nigeria.

Andrew:  It was mind-blowing how profitable Dangote Group was.  One memorable quote - “We can make cement more profitably than someone can make software.”  This prompted Professor Berk to (repeatedly) ask “But WHY???”