American billionaire and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, has revealed what is most surprising to him about Aliko Dangote, president of the Dangote Group.
At the Goalkeepers Summit in New York on Wednesday, Gates and Dangote were asked what they have found to be most surprising about each other.
In his response, Gates said: “It was fun when we got to know each other, we would be travelling around Lagos with the traffic — gives you lots of time to talk. I would be showing Aliko some of my charts, hey Sokoto has a pretty low vaccination rate and Kano needs to do this.”
“And Aliko, he really knows people, he has relationships, he is willing to reach out to people, he would say ‘let’s call the governor’, we would talk to him about this, next thing you know we’ve got the governor of Sokoto on the phone, we’re talking about this.
“So this ability to reach out, to draw on the broad relationships that Aliko has developed — and you know I am pretty shy about calling people. I just want to mail them my charts.
“In fact, what has come out of that is that Aliko and I do conference calls with six of the governors in the northern states where twice a year we look at vaccine coverage.
“It is a big challenge, but really drawing on Aliko’s communication skills and the fact that he is not afraid to call anyone. Everyone likes to talk him, its been phenomenal.”
