January 01, 2017
Exactly
half of Africa’s 20 billionaires got richer in 2016. The continent’s
biggest gainer — in both dollar and percentage terms – is Nigerian oil
and telecom tycoon Mike Adenuga, whose net worth increased $2.7 billion
to $5.8 billion since December 31, 2015. No other African billionaire
added more than $1 billion to his or her net worth in the past year.
Overall, the combined net worths of African billionaires decreased $3.1
billion in 2016.
The
increase in Adenuga’s net worth is largely due to new information
FORBES obtained in 2016 about the value of his assets. Adenuga owns
Nigerian telecom company Globacom and Nigerian oil company Conoil
Producing. While Adenuga’s net worth has increased since the beginning
of 2016, it has dropped significantly since March 2016, when FORBES
valued his fortune at $10 billion on the 2016 Billionaires List.
Since
then, his net worth has dropped $4.2 billion, due to the devaluation of
the Nigerian Naira and the country’s struggling oil sector. Adenuga was
the only Nigerian billionaires whose net worth increased this year.
(Aliko Dangote, the richest Nigerian and Africa’s richest man, saw his
fortune drop nearly 28% to $12.4 billion over the course of 2016.)
South
African mining billionaire Patrice Motsepe and Egyptian billionaires
Nassef Sawiris and Naguib Sawiris were the next biggest gainers in
Africa, each adding $500 million to their fortunes over the year.
Motsepe was also Africa’s second biggest percentage gainer; his net
worth increased by 32% in 2016, bringing his fortune to $1.5 billion.
The stock price of Motsepe’s African Rainbow ARBJY +% Minerals has risen
nearly 130% in the past year, following a steep decline in 2015.
Nassef
Sawiris, the richest billionaire in Egypt with a fortune that FORBES
pegs at $5.2 billion, runs one of the largest nitrogen fertilizer
producers in the world, OCI, and also owns 7% of Adidas and nearly 5% of
cement giant LafargeHolcim. While OCI stock is down 27% over the past
year, Adidas stock is up 58% and LafargeHolcim is up 7%, leading to the
bump in his net worth. Egyptian telecom billionaire Naguib Sawiris, who
has a $3.5 billion fortune announced that he was stepping down as CEO of
Orascom Telecom Media & Technology in December 2016.
Egypt
and South Africa were the only African countries where more than half
of the country’s billionaires got richer in 2016. In both, four out of
seven billionaires added to their wealth in the past year. In Nigeria,
meanwhile, only one of four billionaires got richer this year.
In
total, the twelve African billionaires whose net worths increased this
year added a combined $6.2 billion to their fortunes in 2016. The
continent outperformed the overall FORBES World Billionaires List, where
only 46% of billionaires saw their fortunes increase in 2016. The
year’s biggest global gainer, American billionaire Warren Buffett, has a
fortune that jumped almost twice that amount in 2016.
All net worth changes were measured between Dec. 31, 2015 and Dec. 23, 2016
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