The 20 African tycoons are worth $68.7 billion, down from $75.4 billion for last year’s list. However, the average net worth for each list member this year has climbed to $3.4 billion from $3.3 billion in early 2018.
Buffeted by plunging stock prices and weaker currencies, the number of African billionaires has shrunk to just 20, down from 23 a year ago. Four people fell off Forbes’ annual list of the continent’s richest since last year while one returned to the ranks after a four-year absence. All but four members of the list have smaller fortunes than a year ago.
- Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, founded and chairs Dangote Cement, the continent’s largest cement producer.
- He owns nearly 85% of publicly-traded Dangote Cement through a holding company.
- Dangote Cement produces 45.6 million metric tons annually and has operations in 10 countries across Africa.
- Dangote also owns stakes in publicly-traded salt, sugar and flour manufacturing companies.
- Dangote Refinery has been under construction for three years and is expected to be one of the world’s largest oil refineries once complete.
- Adenuga, Nigeria’s second richest man, built his fortune in telecom and oil production.
- His mobile phone network, Globacom, is the third largest operator in Nigeria, with 43 million subscribers.
- His oil exploration outfit, Conoil Producing, operates 6 oil blocks in the Niger Delta.
- Adenuga got an MBA at Pace University in New York, supporting himself as a student by working as a taxi driver.
- He made his first million at age 26 selling lace and distributing soft drinks.
- Oppenheimer, heir to his family’s fortune, sold his 40% stake in diamond firm DeBeers to mining group Anglo American for $5.1 billion in cash in 2012.
- He was the third generation of his family to run DeBeers, and took the company private in 2001.
- For 85 years until 2012, the Oppenheimer family occupied a controlling spot in the world’s diamond trade.
- In 2014, Oppenheimer started Fireblade Aviation in Johannesburg, which operates chartered flights with its fleet of 3 planes and 2 helicopters.
- He owns at least 720 square miles of conservation land across South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
- Nassef Sawiris is a scion of Egypt’s wealthiest family. His brother Naguib is also a billionaire.
- Sawiris split Orascom Construction Industries into two entities in 2015: OCI and Orascom Construction.
- He runs OCI, one of the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer producers, with plants in Texas and Iowa; it trades on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange.
- Orascom Construction, an engineering and building firm, trades on the Cairo exchange and Nasdaq Dubai.
- His holdings include stakes in cement giant Lafarge Holcim and Adidas; he sits on the supervisory board of Adidas.
- Johann Rupert is chairman of Swiss luxury goods firm Compagnie Financiere Richemont.
- The company is best known for the brands Cartier and Montblanc.
- It was formed in 1998 through a spinoff of assets owned by Rembrandt Group Limited (now Remgro Limited), which his father Anton formed in the 1940s.
- He owns a 7% stake in diversified investment firm Remgro, which he chairs, as well as 25% of Reinet, an investment holding co. based in Luxembourg.
- In recent years, Rupert has been a vocal opponent of plans to allow fracking in the Karoo, a region of South Africa where he owns land.
- Issad Rebrab is the founder and CEO of Cevital, Algeria’s biggest privately-held company.
- Cevital owns one of the largest sugar refineries in the world, with the capacity to produce 2 million tons a year.
- Cevital owns European companies, including French home appliances maker Groupe Brandt, an Italian steel mill and a German water purification company.
- Rebrab has plans to build a steel mill in Brazil to produce train tracks and improve transportation logistics for sugar, corn and soy flour exports.
- His five children work at Cevital.
- Naguib Sawiris is a scion of Egypt’s wealthiest family. His brother Nassef is also a billionaire.
- He built a fortune in telecom, selling Orascom Telecom in 2011 to Russian telecom firm VimpelCom (now Veon) in a multibillion-dollar transaction.
- He’s chairman of Orascom Telecom Media & Technology–renamed Orascom Investment Holding to reflect investments in other sectors.
- Family holding La Mancha has stakes in Evolution Mining, Endeavour Mining and Golden Star Resources, which operate gold mines in Africa and Australia.
- In 2017, he shifted ownership of La Mancha to his mother, Yousriya Loza-Sawiris, for estate planning purposes.
- Koos Bekker is revered for transforming South African newspaper publisher Naspers into an ecommerce investor & cable TV powerhouse.
- He led Naspers to invest in Chinese Internet and media firm Tencent in 2001 — by far the most profitable of the bets he made on companies elsewhere.
- Naspers has a 31% stake in Tencent, and Bekker serves as a non-executive director at the Chinese company.
- It sold a 2% stake in Tencent in March 2018, its first time reducing its holding, but stated at the time it would not sell again for 3 years.
- Bekker, who retired as the CEO of Naspers in March 2014, returned as chairman in April 2015.
- Isabel dos Santos is the oldest daughter of Angola’s longtime former president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who stepped down in fall 2017.
- Her father made her head of Sonangol, Angola’s state oil firm, in June 2016, but Angola’s new president removed her from that role in November 2017.
- Forbes research found that while Isabel’s father was president, she ended up with stakes in Angolan companies including banks and a telecom firm.
- She owns shares of Portuguese companies, including telecom and cable TV firm Nos SGPS.
- A spokesperson for Isabel told Forbes that she “is an independent business woman and a private investor representing solely her own interests.”
- Mohamed Mansour oversees family conglomerate Mansour Group, which was founded by his father Loutfy (D.1976) in 1952 and has 60,000 employees.
- Mansour established General Motors dealerships in Egypt in 1975, later becoming one of GM’s biggest distributors worldwide.
- Mansour Group also has exclusive distribution rights for Caterpillar equipment in Egypt and seven other African countries.
- He served as Egypt’s Minister of Transportation from 2006 to 2009 under the Hosni Mubarak regime.
- His brothers Yasseen and Youssef, who share ownership in the family group, are also billionaires; his son Loutfy heads private equity arm Man Capital.
- Strive Masiyiwa overcame protracted government opposition to launch mobile phone network Econet Wireless Zimbabwe in his country of birth in 1998.
- He owns just over 50% of the publicly-traded Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, which is one part of his larger Econet Group.
- Masiyiwa also owns just over half of private company Liquid Telecom, which provides fiber optic and satellite services to telecom firms across Africa.
- His other assets include stakes in mobile phone networks in Burundi and Lesotho, and investments in fintech and power distribution firms in Africa.
- He and his wife Tsitsi founded the Higherlife Foundation, which supports orphaned and poor children in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi and Lesotho.
- Patrice Motsepe, the founder and chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, became a billionaire in 2008 – the first black African on the Forbes list.
- In 2016, he launched a new private equity firm, African Rainbow Capital, focused on investing in Africa.
- Motsepe also has a stake in Sanlam, a listed financial services firm, and is the president and owner of the Mamelodi Sundowns Football Club.
- In 1994, he became the first black partner at law firm Bowman Gilfillan in Johannesburg, and then started a contracting business doing mine scut work.
- In 1997, he bought low-producing gold mine shafts and later turned them profitable.
- Aziz Akhannouch is the majority owner of Akwa Group, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate founded by his father and a partner, Ahmed Wakrim, in 1932.
- It has interests in petroleum, gas and chemicals through publicly-traded Afriquia Gaz and Maghreb Oxygene.
- Akhannouch is Morocco’s Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and the president of a royalist political party.
- Mohammed Dewji is the CEO of METL, a Tanzanian conglomerate founded by his father in the 1970s.
- METL is active in textile manufacturing, flour milling, beverages and edible oils in eastern, southern and central Africa.
- METL operates in at least six African countries and has ambitions to expand to several more.
- Dewji, Tanzania’s only billionaire, signed the Giving Pledge in 2016, promising to donate at least half his fortune to philanthropic causes.
- Dewji was reportedly kidnapped at gunpoint in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in October 2018 and released after nine days.
- Othman Benjelloun is CEO of BMCE Bank of Africa, which has a presence in more than 20 African countries.
- His father was a shareholder in RMA Watanya, a Moroccan insurance company; Benjelloun built it into a leading insurer.
- Through his holding company FinanceCom, he has a stake in the Moroccan arm of French telecom firm Orange.
- Benjelloun inaugurated a $500 million plan to build the 55-story Mohammed VI Tower in Rabat. It will be one of the tallest buildings in Africa.
- FinanceCom is part of a project to develop a multibillion-dollar tech city in Tangiers that is expected to host 200 Chinese companies.
- Abdulsamad Rabiu is the founder of BUA Group, a Nigerian conglomerate active in cement production, sugar refining and real estate.
- In December 2018, Rabiu merged his privately-owned Kalambaina Cement company with listed firm Cement Co. of Northern Nigeria, which he controlled.
- His BUA Group also owns Obu Cement, which expanded its production with a new line in 2018.
- Rabiu, the son of a businessman, inherited land from his father.
- He set up his own business in 1988 importing iron, steel and chemicals.
- Yasseen Mansour is a shareholder in family-owned conglomerate Mansour Group, which was founded by his father Loutfy (d.1976) in 1952.
- Mansour Group is the exclusive distributor of GM vehicles and Caterpillar equipment in Egypt and several other countries.
- His brothers Mohamed and Youssef are also billionaires and part owners of Mansour Group.
- He’s chairman of Palm Hills Developments, one of Egypt’s biggest real estate developers.
- Youssef Mansour is chairman of family-owned conglomerate Mansour Group, which was founded by his father Loutfy (d.1976) in 1952.
- Mansour Group is the exclusive distributor of GM vehicles and Caterpillar equipment in Egypt and several other countries.
- He oversees the consumer goods division, which includes supermarket chain Metro, and sole distribution rights for L’Oreal in Egypt.
- Younger brothers Mohamed and Yasseen are also billionaires and part owners of Mansour Group.
- Folorunsho Alakija is vice chair of Famfa Oil, a Nigerian oil exploration company with a stake in Agbami Oilfield, a prolific offshore asset.
- Famfa Oil’s partners include Chevron and Petrobras.
- Alakija’s first company was a fashion label whose customers included the wife of former Nigerian president Ibrahim Babangida.
- The Nigerian government awarded Alakija’s company an oil prospecting license in 1993, which was later converted to an oil mining lease.
- The Agbami field has been operating since 2008; Famfa Oil says it will likely operate through 2024.
- Michiel Le Roux of South Africa founded Capitec Bank in 2001 and owns about an 11% stake.
- The bank, which trades on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, targets South Africa’s emerging middle class.
- He served as chairman of the board of Capitec from 2007 to 2016 and has continued on as a board member.
- Le Roux previously ran Boland Bank, a small regional bank in Cape Town’s hinterland.
Source : Forbes
Keywords: Africa, News, Economy, Billionaires
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