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Fatima Aliko-Dangote is the sole female director among the 10 directors listed by Dangote Petroleum Refinery.
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She joined the group in 2014, moving through strategy and business development before taking a commercial leadership role at NASCON in 2016.
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Her current portfolio covers Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals, Dangote Fertiliser and West Africa Exploration and Production.
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A University of Surrey law graduate, Fatima began her career at Banwo & Ighodalo before moving into the Dangote Group.
August 17, (THEWILL) — There are 10 directors listed on the board of Dangote Petroleum Refinery. Nine are men. Fatima Aliko-Dangote is the only woman.
Her place on the board is noteworthy, but her career offers a fuller picture of the executive behind the name. Fatima is Group Executive Director, Group Commercial Operations – Oil & Gas at Dangote Industries Limited, with responsibility for the commercial operations of Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals, Dangote Fertiliser and West Africa Exploration and Production.
Her wider remit includes strategic procurement, branding and communications, general administration and commercial operations across the group’s businesses.
From Law to One of Nigeria’s Biggest Industrial Businesses
Fatima studied law at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom and is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association.
Before joining the Dangote Group, she worked as an associate at Banwo & Ighodalo, where her areas of work included capital markets, intellectual property and energy, according to NASCON’s 2016 annual report.
She joined Dangote Group in 2014 as Special Assistant to the Managing Director of Dangote Cement before moving into Group Corporate Strategy.
In that role, she worked with different businesses across the group on growth strategies. She later served as Executive Assistant to the Group Executive Director, Business Development and Portfolio Management.
In 2016, Fatima moved into a more directly commercial role at NASCON Allied Industries Plc, becoming Executive Director, Commercial. She was appointed to the company’s board on March 11 of the same year.
NASCON had grown well beyond its origins as a salt business by this point.
Established in 1973 as the National Salt Company, it expanded into products including vegetable oil, tomato paste and seasoning, with manufacturing facilities in Lagos, Ogun and Rivers states.
Fatima’s responsibilities covered sales and marketing strategy, logistics, transportation and branding.
NASCON’s financial results provide some sense of the scale of the business during her tenure. In 2018, the company reported sales volume of 397,561 metric tonnes, revenue of ₦25.77 billion, EBITDA of ₦7.95 billion and profit before tax of ₦6.45 billion.
Her work at NASCON also coincided with efforts to expand the company’s product range and market reach.
During the company’s response to the disruption caused by COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, Fatima discussed the effect of the restrictions on its route to market and the role of a new salt refinery in improving productivity and extending the company’s reach.
From there, her career returned to group-level leadership, eventually taking her into the oil and gas portfolio she oversees today.
Dangote’s energy businesses operate across different parts of the value chain. The refinery and petrochemicals business is downstream, West Africa Exploration and Production operates upstream, while Dangote Fertiliser forms another major part of the portfolio.
At the centre of the downstream business is the Lekki refinery, designed to process up to 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Its scale creates commercial demands alongside the technical requirements of running the plant, from crude procurement and product distribution to finding markets for its output in Nigeria and beyond.
Fatima’s commercial background now sits within that larger operation, while her group responsibilities extend to procurement, branding, communications and administration.
Executive education has also featured in her career.
Beyond her corporate responsibilities, executive education has also featured in her career.
She has attended leadership executive programmes at Columbia University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge, and is actively involved in the Aliko Dangote Foundation.
Family remains part of the context. Fatima is Aliko Dangote’s daughter, connecting her to the founder of the conglomerate where she has spent more than a decade working across different parts of the business.
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Her career can be traced through a clear sequence of roles; corporate law before joining Dangote in 2014, strategy and business development within the group, commercial leadership at NASCON from 2016, and eventually group-level responsibility for oil and gas.
She now sits alongside directors whose backgrounds span energy, finance, law, strategy and corporate leadership, including David Bird, a global energy executive; Mutiu Sunmonu, who spent more than four decades in the oil and gas industry, largely with Shell Petroleum Development Company; and Abubakar Balarabe Mahmoud, SAN, a lawyer and arbitrator with more than 40 years of professional experience.
Fatima is the only woman among them.
Her career to the board has passed through several parts of the Dangote Group and given her experience on both the strategic and commercial sides of the business.
Joy Onuorah is a business journalist and brand communications specialist covering financial markets, artificial intelligence, digital economy, and the ideas reshaping business across Africa and the global market. Beyond her reporting for TheWill, Joy uses brand strategy, storytelling, copywriting, and high-value SEO to help brands build lasting market authority.
