Aliko Dangote - Africa's Richest Man

 Contrasting the members of the top 40 richest people in Africa with similar lists from the US, Europe, India, Russia or China, one feature stands out – most made their wealth from family owned businesses that are not connected to the extractive industries of mining or energy. This is despite the fact most often when Africa’s contribution to the global economy is analyzed, generally the discussion focuses on the extractive industries. A sampling of the sectors where most of Africa’s richest people have made their wealth implies that the most profitable economic sectors of the continent are consumer products rather than the extractive industries. Women who dominate Africa’s informal economy are also conspicuously absent from the list. Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote’s, worth 10bn, wealth derives mainly from his sale of flour, sugar and cement. Interestingly, Dangote started out in business after receiving a loan from his uncle, Alhaji Dantata, who was himself one of Nigeria’s most well respected businessmen. (The fact the Dangote did not receive this first loan from a local Nigerian bank is eerily symptomatic of the challenge that most African entrepreneurs face in starting out in business). While Nicky Oppenheimer and family, who come in second place on the Forbes Africa Top 40 rich list, were for generations involved in the diamond business, their recent wholesale exit from that business and forays into agriculture serves to buttress the point that Africa’s much touted extractive industries may be heading into a long period of general declining profitability as local African governments turn more resource nationalist. Of Africa’s top 10, only South Africa’s Patrice Motsepe remains almost exclusively a major investor in the extractive sector. However, even Motsepe has recently increased his investments in Sanlam, South Africa’s leading insurance firm. Egypt’s Sawiris family, who have a combined wealth of over $10bn and who occupy 30% of the top 10 spots on Africa’s richest list, made their wealth in construction and telecom. Apart from the Oppenheimers, the other South Africans in the top 10 of the top 40 list made their money in retail, such as Christofel Wiese (Shoprite) and Johann Rupert (Switzerland’s Vacheron Constantin, Cartier, Alfred Dunhill, Montblanc and Chloé), as well as tobacco. The other Nigerian on top is Michael Adenuga, whose wealth comes mainly from oil services and telecoms. The richest non-Egyptian North African, Moroccan Miloud Chaabi, like the Sawiris, also made his wealth from real-estate. Beyond the top 10, the list of rich Africans expands considerably to include a Zimbabwean, Strive Masiyiwa, who made his fortune in telecoms, several Nigerians who made their fortunes in oil (both beneficiaries of government largesse) and more South Africans with fortunes made in the financial services sector. Large African economies conspicuously missing from the list are Ghana, Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire, Algeria, Libya, Senegal, Sudan, DR Congo, Cameroon, Uganda and Tanzania. As the ranks of Africa’s super rich grows, Europe and America’s well-known traditional European private banks and private wealth managers will do well to take note.

Source: (List) Forbes

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