Dangote is a physical commodity trader. He's just one that moved up the supply chain to actually start manufacturing...and his businesses reflect that. This doesn't necessarily make him as horrible as you make him out to be. But I do think the govt should take more action to open his firms up to indigenous competition.

There are numerous examples of big commodity trading firms moving up the supply chain like Dangote did. In Energy Trading, firms like Vitol, Trafigura, Gunvor moved from just oil trading to refining. It would be interesting to research if these firms operate similar to Dangote wrt lack of engineering innovation/development. I would suspect we'd find similar results.

> Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil in 1870, alongside William Rockefeller, Samuel Andrews, Henry Flagler, Stephen Harkness and others.

Rockefeller himself was a bookkeeper; so a finance guy - similar to Dangote.

Samuel Andrews, however, was essentially a petroleum/chemical engineer. He started out as a candlemaker then got a job in a firm that became the first in Cleveland to refine kerosene from crude oil (R&D).

Also, see "The Chemical History of a Candle" by Michael Faraday to understand that candlemakers were essentially chemists (engineerguy.com/faraday…).

Stephen Harkness was also probably an engineer. He was a harness-maker before going on to found a distillery.

> already ran its own cooperage, storage tanks, warehouses, and plants turning out paint and glue. It was a capability machine, spanning everything from refining to finance to R&D

I wouldn't be surprised if all these engineering "capabilities" were driven by Andrews and Harkness.

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I think what we've hit on is that firms founded by Engineers and that do engineering, might be what we need to get the "capability dividend" in our economies.

It would be interesting to do some research into Nigerian firms that fit the above description. Well, software is replete with examples...but focusing more on "real economy" engineering firms.