Aliko Dangote for the tenth straight time is Africa’s richest person, with a net worth pegged at $12.1 billion according to Forbes 2021 African billionaires’ ranking.
Dangote was joined by Mike Adenuga of Globacom, and Abdulsamad Rabiu of BUA Group as the 5th and 6th richest persons in Africa respectively.
Forbes in its report released on Friday, stated that Dangote, despite the pandemic, made $2 billion in 2020 thanks to a 30 per cent increase in the share price of his Dangote Cement.
Also, the report revealed that the biggest gainer this year is Rabiu who added $5.5 billion, an extraordinary 77 per cent in fortune last year.
The billionaires’ list by country is however led by South Africa and Egypt each having five billionaires in the top 10, followed by Nigeria with three and Morocco with two.
According to forbes, the second richest person in Africa is Nassef Sawiris of Egypt, whose largest asset was a nearly six per cent stake in sportswear maker Adidas.
At number three was Nicky Oppenheimer of South Africa, who inherited a stake in diamond firm DeBeers and ran the company until 2012, when he sold his family’s 40 per cent stake in DeBeers to mining giant AngloAmerican for $5.1bn
It added that while some got richer by the billions, two from the 2020 list of Africa’s richest dropped below the $1bn mark.
In fact, the only two women billionaires from Africa had both fallen off the list.
Forbes calculated that the fortune of Folorunsho Alakija of Nigeria, who owns an oil exploration company, dropped below $1bn due to lower oil prices.
It said Isabel dos Santos, who since 2013 had been the richest woman in Africa, was knocked from her perch by a series of court decisions freezing her assets in both Angola and Portugal.
“In all 18 billionaires from Africa hailed from seven different countries. Altogether they were worth $73.8bn, slightly more than the $73.4bn aggregate worth of the 20 billionaires on last year’s list of Africa’s richest people.”
