Kano State Government has signed a 20-year agreement handing management of the Aliko Dangote Ultra-Modern Skills Acquisition Centre to the Dangote Group, in a bid to revive a facility that had fallen into disrepair despite a multi-billion naira state investment.
Aliko Dangote Centre
The Memorandum of Understanding was signed Tuesday at the cabinet office, with Secretary to the State Government Alh. Umar Farouk Ibrahim entering the pact on the government’s behalf. Ibrahim said the arrangement was necessary to restore the state-owned facility to full operation, stressing that it does not amount to a transfer or sale — ownership remains with Kano State, while Dangote and his representatives will run the centre’s day-to-day operations for the duration of the deal.
The government said its central objective is ensuring young people who pass through the centre leave with practical skills that translate into jobs, businesses, and sustainable livelihoods.
The move addresses a crisis that had been building for months. Established under former Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and named after Aliko Dangote in recognition of his support for youth empowerment, the centre trained thousands of unemployed youths across 20 trades since opening in 2021,
including pipe fitting and plumbing, carpentry, air conditioning and refrigeration, auto mechanics, and ICT.
The Kano State Government had invested about N5.5 billion in the facility, equipping it with modern machines imported from Europe, with Dangote advising the government to double intake capacity to 1,000 trainees per cycle and pledging technical expertise, including expatriates, to maintain global standards.
But operations had ground to a halt. Staff at the centre went nearly nine months without salaries despite reporting to duty daily, with many telling reporters that the delay had pushed their families to the brink, making rent, school fees and even basic feeding difficult to sustain.
The centre operated under the Governor’s Office, supervised by the Chief of Staff, with 63 staff on its payroll and funding split under a tripartite structure involving the state government.
Tuesday’s agreement is intended to break that cycle. According to Ibrahim, the arrangement will give the centre the management structure, resources and operational capacity required to resume full-scale vocational training.
The deal fits a broader pattern of Dangote’s engagement with education and skills development in his home state. He has separately committed a ₦15 billion, five-year development plan for the Aliko Dangote University of Science and Technology in Wudil, covering new hostels, a computer laboratory, and a solar power plant, and a ₦1.5 billion scholarship agreement with Bayero University Kano for postgraduate business students.
The Dangote Group also runs its own training arm, the Dangote Academy, which the company describes as a center of excellence for technical training and vocational skills acquisition designed to close the industrial skill gap in Nigeria. Dangote
