The richest men in Africa are neither salaried workers nor professionals such as medics and lawyers. Businessmen, entrepreneurs, and investors have emerged as Africa’s wealthiest men. Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, and Zimbabwe have the top 12 richest men in Africa. Aliko Dangote has been Africa’s richest man for the past 11 years in a row. Johann Rupert is Africa’s second richest man, and Nicky Oppenheimer is the continent’s third-richest person.
1.Aliko Dangote
Aliko Dangote is a Nigerian billionaire businessman and ranks on top of the richest men in Africa, with an estimated net worth of $18.5 billion. He was born on April 10, 1957, in Kano, Nigeria. Dangote is the founder and current Chairman and CEO of the Dangote Group, West Africa’s largest industrial company. The Dangote group is also Nigeria’s largest industrial organization, containing the Dangote sugar refinery, Dangote cement, and Dangote floor.
Dangote Sugar Refinery Company is the primary supplier of sugar to Nigerian soft drink firms and brewers. This sugar refinery is Africa’s largest and the world’s third largest, generating 800,000 tons of sugar each year. The Dangote Group also imports rice, fish, cement, pasta, and fertilizer. The corporation also owns salt factories and flour mills. The group exports ginger, cashew nuts, cotton, cocoa, and sesame seeds to numerous African nations. Dangote also has stakes in banking, transportation, oil and gas firms, and real estate. In addition, Dangote owns a Peugeot assembly plant in Nigeria.
2.Johann Rupert
Johann Rupert is ranked as the second on the list of the richest men in Africa and South Africa’s richest man, with a net worth of $8.7 billion. He was born in Stellenbosch in June 1950. Rupert founded the Rand Merchant Bank, which later merged with the Rand Consolidated Investments. He joined his father’s firm, Rembrandt, in 1984, and succeeded his father as chairman.
He is the chairman of Richemont, a Swiss luxury goods firm, and Remgro, a South African corporation. He has stock in major banking and financial institutions such as RMB, Wesbank, Discovery, FNB, Momentum, OUTsurance, and Metropolitan. He has invested in telecoms and media stations like as Vumatel, Seacom, Openview, eNCA, DFA, Sqwidnet, YFM, and e.tv.
He has invested in South Africa’s top food and booze companies, including Mediclinic, Total, ER24, the Blue Bulls, and Grindrod. Rupert has a property in Cape Town valued more than $2.1 million. He owns the L Ormarins Wine Estate in Franschhoek. He has a passion for vehicles, and his collection is housed in the Franschhoek Motor Museum. In South Africa’s Mpumalanga area, he founded the Leopard Creek Golf Club. In South Africa, he supports many bursary initiatives. He contributed $62 million to the elimination of Covid 19 and provided financial assistance to those most afflicted by the pandemic.
3.Nicky Oppenheimer
Nicholas F. Oppenheimer is a billionaire businessman from South Africa with a net worth of $8.5 billion. He was previously the chairman of De Beers and its subsidiary, the Diamond Trading Company, as well as the former vice chairman of Anglo American. He is ranked as the third on the list of the richest men in Africa
Oppenheimer’s family sold its 40% ownership in De Beers, the world’s largest diamond miner, to mining corporation Anglo American for $5.2 billion in cash in 2012. He maintains private equity assets in Africa, Asia, the United States, and Europe through Stockdale Street in London and Tana Africa Capital in Johannesburg.
He owns Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, a privately owned game reserve in South Africa’s Northern Cape.He owns Fireblade Aviation, which provides corporate and commercial aircraft handling services. In 2004, he formed the Brenthurst Foundation to aid the Brenthurst initiative in its efforts to find methods to fund African development.
4.Nassef Sawiris
Nassef Onsi Sawiris is an Egyptian billionaire businessman with a net worth of ($7.2 billion). As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$8.7 billion, making him the richest Arab and he is ranked as the fourth on the list of the richest men in Africa. Sawiris has 6% of valuable assets in Adidas sportswear maker. He has a 5% stake in Madison Square Garden Sports, the owners of the NBA Knicks and the NHL Rangers teams. He also purchased the premier Leagues Aston Villa Football club. He owns Orascom an engineering and building firm. He runs OCL one of the largest nitrogen fertilizer producers. He has shares in giant Lafarge Holcim a cement company.
5.Abdulsamad Rabiu
Abdulsamad Rabiu is the founder of BUA Group, a Nigerian conglomerate active in cement production, sugar refining, real estate, steel, port concessions, manufacturing, oil, gas, and shipping. The BUA group also owns the ship BUA Cement, a 200-meter-long vessel designed for heavy loads. Rabiu owns property in Britain, worth $62 million, and in South Africa, worth $19 million. Among his properties is a house in Gloucester Square in London worth nearly $16 million and a penthouse at The One & Only Hotel, in Cape Town, worth $12.6 million. He has a net worth of ($7 billion).
6.Mike Adenuga
Mike Adenuga is among the richest men in Africa with a net worth of ($5.8 billion), and he has invested in telecom and oil production. His company Globacom is Nigeria’s second-largest telecom operator and also operates in Ghana and Benin. He owns stakes in the Equitorial Trust Bank and the oil exploration firm.
His oil exploration firm operates 6 oil blocks in the Niger Delta. Mike Adenuga holds 25.1% ordinary shares of Julius Berger. The shares were acquired through Goldstones Estates Limited. Adenuga is the biggest single largest individual shareholder in Sterling bank. He owns 5.63% direct stakes worth 1.62 billion units. He is one of the shareholders in the First bank, one of the leading financial institutes in Nigeria.
7.Issad Rebrab
Issad Rebrab is an Algerian billionaire businessman with a net worth of ($5.1 billion), he is the CEO of the Cevital industrial group, the largest private company in Algeria, active in steel, food, agribusiness, and electronics. Cevital industrial group 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. Issad Rebrab acquired El Khabar media group, one of the country’s largest media conglomerates, for $45 million.
8.Naguib Sawiris
Naguib Onsi Sawiris is an Egyptian billionaire businessman. Sawiris is chairman of Weather Investments’ parent company, and the former chairman and CEO of Orascom Telecom Holding and Orascom Investment Holding. He’s chairman of Orascom TMT Investments, which has stakes in an asset manager in Egypt and Italian internet company Italia online, among others.
Sawiris is currently the Executive Chairman of Orascom Investment. He is Chairman of La Mancha, the private natural resource investment vehicle of the Sawiris family group with equity investments in Evolution Mining, Endeavour Mining, and Golden Star Resources. In 2015, the Sawiris family acquired a majority stake in Euro news where Sawiris is Chairman of the board.
He served and is serving on numerous boards, committees, and councils including the International Advisory Committee to the New York Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange Group’s Africa Advisory Group, the Boards of Trustees of Nile University, the French University in Egypt, and the Arab Thought Foundation.
9.Patrice Motsepe
Patrice Motsepe founded and now chairs African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), a publicly traded mining conglomerate with interests in platinum, nickel, chrome, iron, manganese, coal, copper, and gold Patrice is the CEO of Harmony, a firm that specializes in transforming existing buildings into new ones.
He is the Deputy Chairman of Sanlam, one of South Africa’s biggest financial services firms, as well as the President of Business Unity South Africa (BUSA), the voice of South Africa’s organized business. Patrice Motsepe is one of South Africa’s most successful businessmen, owning shares in Sanlam, Rain, Alexander Forbes, and Timebank. Motsepe also owns Mamelodi Sundowns and the Blue Bulls, and he is the current head of the Confederation of African Football. Motsepe founded African Rainbow Capital (ARC) in 2015, following his success in the mining industry.
10.Koos Bekker
Koos” Bekker is a South African billionaire businessman and the chairman of the media group Naspers. He is ranked as the tenth on the list of the richest men in AfricaThe corporation has operations in 130 countries and is listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges. He has invested in newspapers, the Internet, books, magazines, and education through his firm. He has made investments in countries other than Africa, including China, India, and Russia.
The company operates across Europe, Latin America, Africa, China, India, Russia, and a number of other smaller nations. In 1990, Koos was a founding director of MTN, a mobile communication firm. In 1997, he was appointed CEO of Naspers, which was the first investor in the M-Net/Multichoice company and ultimately purchased all other stockholders.
Bekker is still the director of Media24 and MultiChoice. He was also a member of the Local Organizing Committee for the 2010 FIFA World. In addition he oversaw substantial investments in developing market Internet firms, including Tencent Holdings, China’s Internet and instant messaging leader, Abril, a Brazilian magazine publisher, and Mail.ru, a Russian Internet behemoth.
11.Strive Masiyiwa
Masiyiwa is the founder and executive chairman of South Africa’s Econet Group and Cassava Technologies, as well as one of the African continent’s pioneers in the mobile telecoms business. Masiyiwa has also contributed to the growth of Africa’s independent media. He controls somewhat more than half of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, a subsidiary of his bigger Econet Group.
Masiyiwa also controls slightly more than half of the private company Liquid Telecom, which provides fiber optic and satellite services to African telecom companies. His other holdings include shares in mobile phone networks in Burundi and Lesotho, as well as investments in African fintech and power distribution enterprises.
He and his wife Tsitsi established the Higher life Foundation to help orphaned and impoverished orphans in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi, and Lesotho. He is in charge of the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team in his capacity as Special Envoy. In 2014 and 2015, he oversaw a private-sector plan to counter Ebola in West Africa.
12.Mohamed Mansour
Mohamed Mansour is a wealthy businessman and former Egyptian politician. He is the chairman of Mansour, as well as the founder and chairman of the Mansour Automotive Company and the chairman of Mantrac, Caterpillar’s authorized distributor. is the founder and chairman of the Lead Foundation, a non-profit organization that funds small and micro businesses. The net worth of Mohamed Mansour is believed to be over $5.5 billion. His fortune is mostly obtained from investments in energy, logistics, engineering, and manufacturing.
