The Richest People In Africa 2013
1. Aliko Dangote
$20.2 billion
Industry: Manufacturing
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 56
Marital Status: Married
Africa’s richest man started building his
fortune three decades ago after taking a
business loan from his maternal uncle to
begin trading in commodities such as flour,
sugar, rice and cement. In the early 2000s,
he started producing these items himself.
His Dangote Group is now the largest
manufacturing conglomerate in West Africa
and owns sugar refineries, salt processing
facilities, a beverage manufacturer and a
string of cement plants across Africa. In
October 2012, Dangote sold a controlling
stake in his flour milling company to Tiger
Brands, a South African manufacturer of
consumer goods. He pocketed $190 million
from the sale. Dangote’s biggest asset is
Dangote Cement, a $20-billion (market cap)
cement manufacturer with operations in 14
countries and an annual production
capacity of 30 million metric tonnes. In
June this year, South Africa’s Public
Investment Corporation acquired a 1.5-
percent stake in the company for $290
million. Dangote is also Africa’s most
generous philanthropist. Within the last 12
months, he has given away over $100
million to causes ranging from youth
empowerment to flood relief, religious
causes and education. His younger brother,
Sani Dangote, is Vice Chairman of Dangote
Group.
2. Allan Gray
$8.5 billion
Industry: Financial services
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 75
Marital Status: Married
This media-shy South African moneyman
controls two investment companies that
collectively manage over $50 billion in
assets. After Gray received an MBA from
Harvard, he worked for eight years at
Fidelity Management and Research in
Boston before returning to Cape Town in
1973, when he founded Allan Gray Limited,
now the largest privately owned asset
manager in South Africa. It is also the most
successful with assets under management
at approximately $30 billion. According to
inside sources at the company, Allan Gray’s
global mandate share portfolio has
achieved an average annual return of 28
percent since 1974. Keys to success include
rigorous research and the consistent
application of Allan Gray’s ages-old and
time-tested investment approach of buying
heavily into companies whose share price
is less than their intrinsic value. Gray is also
the founder of Orbis, an asset manager in
Bermuda, which he founded in 1989. Orbis
has over $21 billion under management.
Gray’s son, William, is President of Orbis
and equally serves as portfolio manager of
the Orbis Funds. Gray and his family are
the controlling shareholders of Allan Gray
Limited and Orbis. In 2007, Gray endowed
his Allan Gray Orbis Foundation with $130
million, the single largest charity gift in
Southern Africa at the time. The foundation
funds scholarships for poor but promising
South African high school students.
3. Mike Adenuga
$8 billion
Industry: Oil, telecoms
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 60
Marital Status: Married
Nigeria’s second richest man made his first
fortune in his mid-twenties by distributing
lace fabrics and Coca- Cola, and by
handling lucrative government contracts
during the regime of former Nigerian
military President, Ibrahim Babangida. In
the early nineties he founded Conoil
Producing, an indigenous oil exploration
and production outfit that was the first
Nigerian company to strike oil in
commercial quantities. Today, Conoil
Producing’s assets produce more than
100,000 barrels of crude a day. Adenuga’s
other holdings include Globacom, a
Nigerian mobile telecommunications
network that boasts more than 25 million
customers in Nigeria and Republic of Benin.
He also owns a 74-percent stake in Conoil
PLC, a petroleum marketing outfit listed on
the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
4. Folorunsho Alakija
$7.3 billion
Industry: Oil
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 62
Marital Status: Married
Africa’s richest woman sits atop Famfa Oil,
a Nigerian oil company that owns a 60-
percent stake in OML 127, one of Nigeria’s
most prolific oil blocks located at Nigerian
offshore Agbami deepwater field. Daily
production at OML 127 stands at over
200,000 barrels per day. Alakija studied
fashion design in England in the eighties,
returning to Nigeria to found Supreme
Stitches, a Nigerian fashion label which
enjoyed patronage from the more
successful women in Nigerian high society.
One of her clients was Maryam Babangida,
the wife to former Nigerian military
President, Ibrahim Babangida. Alakija is
believed to have ridden on the crest of this
relationship to acquire an oil block in 1993
at a relatively inexpensive price. Famfa
immediately entered into a joint venture
agreement with Star Deep Water Petroleum
(a subsidiary of Chevron and Brazil’s
Petrobas), ceding a 40-percent stake to the
two companies. Famfa owned a 60-percent
interest in the block until 2000, when the
incumbent Nigerian president, Olusegun
Obasanjo, forcefully acquired a 50-percent
stake in the block, transferring it to the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation –
a government-owned oil company. Famfa
Oil immediately went to court to challenge
the acquisition in a case that dragged on
for 12 years. In May 2013, the Nigerian
Supreme court reinstated the 50-percent
stake to Famfa Oil. Alakija also owns $200-
million of real estate in the United
Kingdom.
5. Nicky Oppenheimer
$6.5 billion
Industry: Mining, investments
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 68
Marital Status: Married
Diamonds are not forever. In November
2011, Nicky Oppenheimer made the
momentous decision to sell off his family’s
stake in De Beers, the world’s largest
diamond producer, to mining behemoth
Anglo American. The landmark $5.1-billion
deal ended the Oppenheimer family’s
eight-decade control of De Beers, which
began when Nicky’s grandfather, Sir Ernest
Oppenheimer, took over the firm in 1927
and consolidated the company’s global
monopoly over the world’s diamond
industry. In 2011, E Oppenheimer & Sons,
the family-owned investment firm which
Nicky controls, partnered with Temasek, the
investment firm of the Government of
Singapore, to form Tana Africa Capital, a $
300-million private equity fund that invests
in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG)
and agriculture sectors.
6. Johann Rupert
$6.1 billion
Industry: Luxury goods and retail
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 63
Marital Status: Married
Johann Rupert is the chairman of Swiss-
based luxury goods company, Compagnie
Financière Richemont SA, which owns
premium brands such as Cartier, Dunhill,
IWC Schaffhausen, Piaget and Vacheron
Constantin, among many others. It is the
sixth largest company on the Swiss stock
exchange and the third largest luxury
goods company in the world. Johann’s
father, Anton Rupert, founded a small
cigarette manufacturing operation,
Rembrandt, in his garage in 1941 with a
£10-investment. Rembrandt became
incredibly popular among young South
African smokers and by the 1950s, was
already one of the leading tobacco firms in
the continent. Anton, ever the visionary,
diversified from tobacco into the industrial
and luxury branded goods sectors, splitting
Rembrandt into two divisions: Remgro (an
investment company with financial, mining
and industrial interests) and Richemont
(the Swiss-based luxury goods group).
Johann is chairman and the largest
individual shareholder in both companies.
He also owns two of South Africa’s best-
known vineyards, Rupert & Rothschild and
L’Ormarins, and founded the Franschhoek
Motor Museum, which houses his personal
collection of over 200 antique motor
vehicles.
7. Nassef Sawiris
$5.2 billion
Industry: Construction
Country Of Citizenship: Egypt
Age: 53
Marital Status: Married
Nassef Sawiris is the youngest of the three
sons of Egyptian billionaire and founder of
the Orascom conglomerate, Onsi Sawiris.
He heads Orascom Construction Industries
(OCI), one of the largest companies in the
North Africa region. In January this year,
Nassef announced that OCI was exchanging
all global depositary receipts of the
company for newly issued shares of OCI NV
on the NYSE Euronext in Amsterdam or in
exchange for cash. A consortium of
investors, including Microsoft founder Bill
Gates, provided the $1 billion in fresh
capital required to pay off investors. The
overwhelming majority of the shareholders
accepted the buyout offer, which
subsequently led to the company’s delisting
on the EGX. Nassef also serves as a director
at Lafarge, the French cement giant, and
the Dubai international Financial Exchange.
8. Gilbert Chagoury & Family
$4.2 billion
Industry: Construction
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 67
Marital Status: Married
The Nigerian-Lebanese industrialist and
diplomat is a co-founder of the Chagoury
Group, a large, multi-faceted Nigerian
conglomerate with interests in
manufacturing, construction, real estate,
hospitality and healthcare. Gilbert was born
in 1946 in Lagos by Lebanese immigrant
parents. After studying at the College des
Freres Chretiens in Lebanon, he returned to
Nigeria where he kick-started his business
career. In 1971 he started GrandsMoulins
du Bénin Flour Mills, a milling company in
Cottonou, Republic of Benin, which formed
the foundation of the Chagoury Group.
Today, the Chagoury Group owns five flour-
milling companies in Nigeria and Republic
of Benin. Chagoury’s milling operations
collectively produce over 3,700 metric
tonnes of wheat flour every day. The
Chagoury Group also owns a glass bottle
manufacturing plant and a plastic bottle
manufacturing operation. Other assets
include Eko Hotel, a five-star Hotel in
Lagos, and Hotel Presidential, a five-star
hotel in Port Harcourt. One of the newer
companies within the group is South
EnergyX, a real estate development
company that is developing Eko Atlantic, a
new $6-billion metropolis on land
reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. When
completed, Eko Atlantic is expected to
provide residential accommodation for up
to 250,000 people. Chagoury’s property
portfolio also includes Ocean Parade, a
series of 14 tower blocks overlooking a
lagoon in Banana Island, Nigeria’s priciest
residential community. Gilbert Chagoury’s
career has not been without controversy.
In 2001, in a British court, he admitted to
helping the family of deceased Nigerian
dictator, Sani Abacha, transfer $300 million
into foreign accounts. He returned the
money and was indemnified of charges.
9. Nathan Kirsh
$3.6 billion
Industry: Real Estate, Distribution
Country Of Citizenship: Swaziland
Age: 82
Marital Status: Married
Nathan Kirsh made his first fortune after
he founded a successful corn milling
business in Swaziland. He deftly reinvested
his profits in food distribution and real
estate. The bulk of his fortune is held in
various property and distribution
companies. His investment company, Kirsh
Holding Group, owns a 50-percent stake in
Swazi Plaza Properties – the company that
owns the largest shopping mall in
Swaziland. He also owns a 29-percent stake
in Minerva, a London-based property
developer, and a 63-percent stake in Jetro
Holdings, which operates Jetro Cash and
Carry stores and Restaurant Depots in the
New York City area. Jetro enjoys a near
monopoly in supplying wholesale goods to
small stores and restaurants in the New
York City area and had revenues of over $6
billion in 2013. Kirsh is also the largest
individual shareholder in Magal Security
Systems, a developer and supplier of
control systems and intruder detection
systems.
10. Christoffel Wiese
$3.4 billion
Industry: Retail
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 72
Marital Status: Married
The South African businessman is the
chairman and greatest individual
shareholder of Shoprite, Africa’s largest
discount retailer. After studying Law at the
University of Stellenbosch, Wiese took up a
job as an executive director at Pep Stores,
a discount clothing chain his parents co-
founded. In 1979, Pep Stores diversified
into groceries through its acquisition of
Shoprite, a small South African retail chain.
When Wiese became chairman of the
company in 1981, he changed the
company’s name to Pepkor and made a
series of acquisitions including Ackermans,
a prominent clothing chain. He went on to
list Shoprite on the Johannesburg Stock
Exchange. He owns a 15-percent stake in
the $7-billion (market cap) company. While
his Shoprite stake remains his biggest
asset, he also owns significant stakes in
other Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed
companies, including Invicta Holdings, PSG
Holdings, Tradehold, and private equity
firm, Brait. Other assets include a private
game reserve in the Kalahari and
Lourensford Wine Estate.
1. Aliko Dangote
$20.2 billion
Industry: Manufacturing
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 56
Marital Status: Married
Africa’s richest man started building his
fortune three decades ago after taking a
business loan from his maternal uncle to
begin trading in commodities such as flour,
sugar, rice and cement. In the early 2000s,
he started producing these items himself.
His Dangote Group is now the largest
manufacturing conglomerate in West Africa
and owns sugar refineries, salt processing
facilities, a beverage manufacturer and a
string of cement plants across Africa. In
October 2012, Dangote sold a controlling
stake in his flour milling company to Tiger
Brands, a South African manufacturer of
consumer goods. He pocketed $190 million
from the sale. Dangote’s biggest asset is
Dangote Cement, a $20-billion (market cap)
cement manufacturer with operations in 14
countries and an annual production
capacity of 30 million metric tonnes. In
June this year, South Africa’s Public
Investment Corporation acquired a 1.5-
percent stake in the company for $290
million. Dangote is also Africa’s most
generous philanthropist. Within the last 12
months, he has given away over $100
million to causes ranging from youth
empowerment to flood relief, religious
causes and education. His younger brother,
Sani Dangote, is Vice Chairman of Dangote
Group.
2. Allan Gray
$8.5 billion
Industry: Financial services
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 75
Marital Status: Married
This media-shy South African moneyman
controls two investment companies that
collectively manage over $50 billion in
assets. After Gray received an MBA from
Harvard, he worked for eight years at
Fidelity Management and Research in
Boston before returning to Cape Town in
1973, when he founded Allan Gray Limited,
now the largest privately owned asset
manager in South Africa. It is also the most
successful with assets under management
at approximately $30 billion. According to
inside sources at the company, Allan Gray’s
global mandate share portfolio has
achieved an average annual return of 28
percent since 1974. Keys to success include
rigorous research and the consistent
application of Allan Gray’s ages-old and
time-tested investment approach of buying
heavily into companies whose share price
is less than their intrinsic value. Gray is also
the founder of Orbis, an asset manager in
Bermuda, which he founded in 1989. Orbis
has over $21 billion under management.
Gray’s son, William, is President of Orbis
and equally serves as portfolio manager of
the Orbis Funds. Gray and his family are
the controlling shareholders of Allan Gray
Limited and Orbis. In 2007, Gray endowed
his Allan Gray Orbis Foundation with $130
million, the single largest charity gift in
Southern Africa at the time. The foundation
funds scholarships for poor but promising
South African high school students.
3. Mike Adenuga
$8 billion
Industry: Oil, telecoms
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 60
Marital Status: Married
Nigeria’s second richest man made his first
fortune in his mid-twenties by distributing
lace fabrics and Coca- Cola, and by
handling lucrative government contracts
during the regime of former Nigerian
military President, Ibrahim Babangida. In
the early nineties he founded Conoil
Producing, an indigenous oil exploration
and production outfit that was the first
Nigerian company to strike oil in
commercial quantities. Today, Conoil
Producing’s assets produce more than
100,000 barrels of crude a day. Adenuga’s
other holdings include Globacom, a
Nigerian mobile telecommunications
network that boasts more than 25 million
customers in Nigeria and Republic of Benin.
He also owns a 74-percent stake in Conoil
PLC, a petroleum marketing outfit listed on
the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
4. Folorunsho Alakija
$7.3 billion
Industry: Oil
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 62
Marital Status: Married
Africa’s richest woman sits atop Famfa Oil,
a Nigerian oil company that owns a 60-
percent stake in OML 127, one of Nigeria’s
most prolific oil blocks located at Nigerian
offshore Agbami deepwater field. Daily
production at OML 127 stands at over
200,000 barrels per day. Alakija studied
fashion design in England in the eighties,
returning to Nigeria to found Supreme
Stitches, a Nigerian fashion label which
enjoyed patronage from the more
successful women in Nigerian high society.
One of her clients was Maryam Babangida,
the wife to former Nigerian military
President, Ibrahim Babangida. Alakija is
believed to have ridden on the crest of this
relationship to acquire an oil block in 1993
at a relatively inexpensive price. Famfa
immediately entered into a joint venture
agreement with Star Deep Water Petroleum
(a subsidiary of Chevron and Brazil’s
Petrobas), ceding a 40-percent stake to the
two companies. Famfa owned a 60-percent
interest in the block until 2000, when the
incumbent Nigerian president, Olusegun
Obasanjo, forcefully acquired a 50-percent
stake in the block, transferring it to the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation –
a government-owned oil company. Famfa
Oil immediately went to court to challenge
the acquisition in a case that dragged on
for 12 years. In May 2013, the Nigerian
Supreme court reinstated the 50-percent
stake to Famfa Oil. Alakija also owns $200-
million of real estate in the United
Kingdom.
5. Nicky Oppenheimer
$6.5 billion
Industry: Mining, investments
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 68
Marital Status: Married
Diamonds are not forever. In November
2011, Nicky Oppenheimer made the
momentous decision to sell off his family’s
stake in De Beers, the world’s largest
diamond producer, to mining behemoth
Anglo American. The landmark $5.1-billion
deal ended the Oppenheimer family’s
eight-decade control of De Beers, which
began when Nicky’s grandfather, Sir Ernest
Oppenheimer, took over the firm in 1927
and consolidated the company’s global
monopoly over the world’s diamond
industry. In 2011, E Oppenheimer & Sons,
the family-owned investment firm which
Nicky controls, partnered with Temasek, the
investment firm of the Government of
Singapore, to form Tana Africa Capital, a $
300-million private equity fund that invests
in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG)
and agriculture sectors.
6. Johann Rupert
$6.1 billion
Industry: Luxury goods and retail
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 63
Marital Status: Married
Johann Rupert is the chairman of Swiss-
based luxury goods company, Compagnie
Financière Richemont SA, which owns
premium brands such as Cartier, Dunhill,
IWC Schaffhausen, Piaget and Vacheron
Constantin, among many others. It is the
sixth largest company on the Swiss stock
exchange and the third largest luxury
goods company in the world. Johann’s
father, Anton Rupert, founded a small
cigarette manufacturing operation,
Rembrandt, in his garage in 1941 with a
£10-investment. Rembrandt became
incredibly popular among young South
African smokers and by the 1950s, was
already one of the leading tobacco firms in
the continent. Anton, ever the visionary,
diversified from tobacco into the industrial
and luxury branded goods sectors, splitting
Rembrandt into two divisions: Remgro (an
investment company with financial, mining
and industrial interests) and Richemont
(the Swiss-based luxury goods group).
Johann is chairman and the largest
individual shareholder in both companies.
He also owns two of South Africa’s best-
known vineyards, Rupert & Rothschild and
L’Ormarins, and founded the Franschhoek
Motor Museum, which houses his personal
collection of over 200 antique motor
vehicles.
7. Nassef Sawiris
$5.2 billion
Industry: Construction
Country Of Citizenship: Egypt
Age: 53
Marital Status: Married
Nassef Sawiris is the youngest of the three
sons of Egyptian billionaire and founder of
the Orascom conglomerate, Onsi Sawiris.
He heads Orascom Construction Industries
(OCI), one of the largest companies in the
North Africa region. In January this year,
Nassef announced that OCI was exchanging
all global depositary receipts of the
company for newly issued shares of OCI NV
on the NYSE Euronext in Amsterdam or in
exchange for cash. A consortium of
investors, including Microsoft founder Bill
Gates, provided the $1 billion in fresh
capital required to pay off investors. The
overwhelming majority of the shareholders
accepted the buyout offer, which
subsequently led to the company’s delisting
on the EGX. Nassef also serves as a director
at Lafarge, the French cement giant, and
the Dubai international Financial Exchange.
8. Gilbert Chagoury & Family
$4.2 billion
Industry: Construction
Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria
Age: 67
Marital Status: Married
The Nigerian-Lebanese industrialist and
diplomat is a co-founder of the Chagoury
Group, a large, multi-faceted Nigerian
conglomerate with interests in
manufacturing, construction, real estate,
hospitality and healthcare. Gilbert was born
in 1946 in Lagos by Lebanese immigrant
parents. After studying at the College des
Freres Chretiens in Lebanon, he returned to
Nigeria where he kick-started his business
career. In 1971 he started GrandsMoulins
du Bénin Flour Mills, a milling company in
Cottonou, Republic of Benin, which formed
the foundation of the Chagoury Group.
Today, the Chagoury Group owns five flour-
milling companies in Nigeria and Republic
of Benin. Chagoury’s milling operations
collectively produce over 3,700 metric
tonnes of wheat flour every day. The
Chagoury Group also owns a glass bottle
manufacturing plant and a plastic bottle
manufacturing operation. Other assets
include Eko Hotel, a five-star Hotel in
Lagos, and Hotel Presidential, a five-star
hotel in Port Harcourt. One of the newer
companies within the group is South
EnergyX, a real estate development
company that is developing Eko Atlantic, a
new $6-billion metropolis on land
reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. When
completed, Eko Atlantic is expected to
provide residential accommodation for up
to 250,000 people. Chagoury’s property
portfolio also includes Ocean Parade, a
series of 14 tower blocks overlooking a
lagoon in Banana Island, Nigeria’s priciest
residential community. Gilbert Chagoury’s
career has not been without controversy.
In 2001, in a British court, he admitted to
helping the family of deceased Nigerian
dictator, Sani Abacha, transfer $300 million
into foreign accounts. He returned the
money and was indemnified of charges.
9. Nathan Kirsh
$3.6 billion
Industry: Real Estate, Distribution
Country Of Citizenship: Swaziland
Age: 82
Marital Status: Married
Nathan Kirsh made his first fortune after
he founded a successful corn milling
business in Swaziland. He deftly reinvested
his profits in food distribution and real
estate. The bulk of his fortune is held in
various property and distribution
companies. His investment company, Kirsh
Holding Group, owns a 50-percent stake in
Swazi Plaza Properties – the company that
owns the largest shopping mall in
Swaziland. He also owns a 29-percent stake
in Minerva, a London-based property
developer, and a 63-percent stake in Jetro
Holdings, which operates Jetro Cash and
Carry stores and Restaurant Depots in the
New York City area. Jetro enjoys a near
monopoly in supplying wholesale goods to
small stores and restaurants in the New
York City area and had revenues of over $6
billion in 2013. Kirsh is also the largest
individual shareholder in Magal Security
Systems, a developer and supplier of
control systems and intruder detection
systems.
10. Christoffel Wiese
$3.4 billion
Industry: Retail
Country Of Citizenship: South Africa
Age: 72
Marital Status: Married
The South African businessman is the
chairman and greatest individual
shareholder of Shoprite, Africa’s largest
discount retailer. After studying Law at the
University of Stellenbosch, Wiese took up a
job as an executive director at Pep Stores,
a discount clothing chain his parents co-
founded. In 1979, Pep Stores diversified
into groceries through its acquisition of
Shoprite, a small South African retail chain.
When Wiese became chairman of the
company in 1981, he changed the
company’s name to Pepkor and made a
series of acquisitions including Ackermans,
a prominent clothing chain. He went on to
list Shoprite on the Johannesburg Stock
Exchange. He owns a 15-percent stake in
the $7-billion (market cap) company. While
his Shoprite stake remains his biggest
asset, he also owns significant stakes in
other Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed
companies, including Invicta Holdings, PSG
Holdings, Tradehold, and private equity
firm, Brait. Other assets include a private
game reserve in the Kalahari and
Lourensford Wine Estate.
Comments
Post a Comment