Top 10 Africa’s Billionaires

Founder and Chief Executive of the Dangote Group Aliko Dangote gestures during an interview with Reuters in his office in Lagos, Nigeria, June 13, 2012. REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye/File Photo




According to the Forbes, the top 10 richest people in the continent have an average networth of $4.1 billion Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote tops the list of the wealthiest Africans for the tenth year in a row thanks to a 30% increase in the share price of his Dangote Cement Company.

Egyptian Nassef Sawiris, who controls a 6% stake in sportswear, Adidas, emerged second, while Nicky Oppenheimer of South Africa was ranked third.

1. Aliko Dangote The Nigerian billionaire business magnate is the wealthiest person in Africa, with an estimated net worth of $ 12.1 billion. His main source of income comes from cement and sugar sales.

Dangote’s wealth rose by $ 2 billion in 2020 after a 30% increase in the share price of his cement company.

2. Nassef Sawiris The Egyptian rakes in billions of from construction and investments in diverse sectors the 60-year-old is the youngest of Onsi Sawiris’ three sons. As of May 2021, his net worth was estimated to be $9.2 billion an increase from $ 8.5 billion in January.

In 2021, he was considered to be the richest Arab as well as the second richest African.

3. Nicky Oppenheimer, heir to the DeBeers diamond fortune, sold his 40% of the firm 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. He owns at least 720 square miles of conservation land across South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

4. 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 7% of diversified investment firm Remgro, which he chairs, as well as 25% of Reinet, an investment holding company 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.

5. Mike 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 55 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.

6. Abdulsamad Rabiu is the founder of BUA Group, a Nigerian conglomerate active in cement production, sugar refining and real estate. In early January 2020, Rabiu merged his privately-owned Obu Cement company with listed firm Cement Co. of Northern Nigeria, which he controlled.

The combined firm, called BUA Cement Plc, trades on the Nigerian stock exchange; Rabiu owns 98.5% of it. Rabiu, the son of a businessman, inherited land from his father. He set up his own business in 1988 importing iron, steel and chemicals.

7. 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. After serving 8 months in jail on charges of corruption, Rebrab was released on January 1, 2020. He denies any wrongdoing.




8. 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 TMT Investments, which has stakes in an asset manager in Egypt and Italian internet company Italiaonline, among others.

Through his Media Globe Holdings, Sawiris owns 88% of pan-European pay TV and video news network Euronews. He also developed a luxury resort called Silversands on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

9. 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 mining services contracting business. In 1997, he bought low-producing gold mine shafts and later turned them profitable.

10. Koos Bekker is revered for transforming South African newspaper publisher Naspers into an ecommerce investor and 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.

In 2019, Naspers put some assets into two publicly-traded companies, entertainment firm MultiChoice Group and Prosus, which contains the Tencent stake.

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.