Ventures Africa's Richest People in Africa 2013 List
Ventures Africa magazine has released their list of the top 10 Richest People in Africa 2013.
The combined fortune of Africa’s 55 billionaires is
$143.88 billion. The average net worth of the members of this exclusive
club is $2.6 billion, while the median age of the richest people in
Africa is 65 years. The oldest billionaires are Kenyan industrialist,
Manu Chandaria, and Egyptian property tycoon, Mohammed Al-Fayed, both
aged 84. The youngest billionaires are Mohammed Dewji of Tanzania and
Igho Sanomi, a Nigerian oil trader. They are both 38 years old.
Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt lead the pack with the highest number
of billionaires at 20, nine and eight respectively. Algeria, Angola,
Zimbabwe and Swaziland only have one billionaire each. In all, there are
10 African countries represented on the list.
Three women made it into the rankings. The richest of them is
Folorunsho Alakija, a Nigerian fashion designer and oil tycoon worth
some $7.3 billion by our estimates.
See the full list after the cut...
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.
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