Richest people in Africa 2026

Africa’s billionaire class is growing faster than on any other continent. The individuals on this list have built their wealth across oil and gas, mining, telecoms, retail, banking and real estate, in markets that most international investors underestimated for decades. Their stories are not just personal finance narratives. They are maps of where Africa’s economic power is concentrated, how it was built, and where it is going.

All net worth figures are approximate, drawn from Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Forbes Africa and public financial disclosures as of May 2026. African wealth can shift materially with commodity prices, currency movements and capital markets performance.

1. Aliko Dangote (Nigeria): approximately $23-28 billion

Aliko Dangote is Africa’s wealthiest person by a substantial margin and one of the most consequential industrialists in the developing world. Born in Kano in 1957, he built his fortune first in commodities trading before pivoting to manufacturing at continental scale. His holding company, the Dangote Group, operates across cement, fertiliser, sugar, salt, logistics and most significantly, petroleum refining.

The Dangote Refinery in Lagos, commissioned in 2023 and now operational at scale, is the world’s largest single-train oil refinery at 650,000 barrels per day. It already supplies more than 90% of Nigeria’s domestic fuel demand and has begun exporting refined petroleum products to Europe and East Africa. The refinery alone represents a $20 billion investment and a structural transformation of Nigeria’s energy economy.

Dangote Cement is Africa’s largest cement producer with 14-country operations and a market capitalisation of approximately $13 billion on the Nigerian Exchange. A London listing is targeted for September 2026. A pan-African IPO of the refinery is expected imminently. A 20,000MW power programme is in development. Dangote has described 2026 as “the busiest year of his business life.”

His wealth reflects decades of industrial investment in markets others avoided. The lesson of Dangote’s empire is that patient, long-horizon capital deployed in Africa’s real economy can generate returns that compound into generational wealth.

2. Johann Rupert (South Africa): approximately $11-13 billion

Johann Rupert chairs Compagnie Financière Richemont, the Swiss luxury conglomerate that owns Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre and a portfolio of the world’s most prestigious jewellery and watch brands. He is the son of Anton Rupert, who built Rembrandt Group, and has spent his career transforming a South African tobacco and financial services empire into a global luxury powerhouse.

Richemont generates over €20 billion in annual revenue and trades on the Swiss Exchange at a market capitalisation above €50 billion. The South African anchor includes Remgro, the diversified investment holding company with stakes in banking, insurance, media and infrastructure. Rupert remains deeply connected to the South African economy through Remgro while managing a European-listed global luxury business.

3. Nicky Oppenheimer (South Africa): approximately $8-10 billion

Nicky Oppenheimer sold his family’s 40% stake in De Beers to Anglo American for $5.1 billion in 2012, converting a century of diamond mining wealth into a diversified family investment portfolio. The Oppenheimer family’s Fireblade Aviation operates private terminals at OR Tambo International in Johannesburg and Lanseria Airport. The family has invested significantly in African technology ventures and conservation through the Brenthurst Foundation and Tswalu Kalahari Reserve. Oppenheimer remains one of the most influential private voices in South African business.

4. Abdulsamad Rabiu (Nigeria): approximately $8-10 billion

Abdul Samad Rabiu is the founder and chairman of BUA Group, a Nigerian industrial conglomerate with significant operations in cement, sugar refining and real estate. BUA Cement is Nigeria’s second-largest cement producer and has seen its share price surge more than 134% in 2026 as post-naira-devaluation earnings recovery flows through to listed company valuations. Rabiu is ranked by Bloomberg at Africa’s second-richest position in some periods and fourth by Forbes, reflecting the divergence in methodology for valuing Nigerian assets during periods of rapid price appreciation. His industrial model closely mirrors Dangote’s: import substitution manufacturing at scale, serving Nigeria’s vast domestic market.

5. Mike Adenuga (Nigeria): approximately $7-8 billion

Mike Adenuga built his fortune across telecoms and oil. Globacom, his mobile network operator, is Nigeria’s second-largest telecoms company by subscribers with over 50 million customers and operations in Ghana, Benin and Ivory Coast. His oil company Conoil is a significant Nigeria upstream and downstream player. Adenuga is famously private and rarely gives interviews, making his actual wealth harder to verify precisely than most on this list. His influence on Nigerian business, however, is unambiguous.

6. Patrice Motsepe (South Africa): approximately $3-4 billion

Patrice Motsepe is the founder and executive chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, one of South Africa’s largest diversified mining companies with interests in gold, platinum group metals, coal, copper, iron ore, manganese and nickel. He is also the president of the Confederation of African Football and the brother-in-law of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. His Ubuntu-Botho Investments holds significant stakes in Sanlam and other financial services companies. Motsepe was Africa’s first black dollar billionaire when he crossed that threshold in 2008.

7. Strive Masiyiwa (Zimbabwe): approximately $2-3 billion

Strive Masiyiwa is the founder of Econet Wireless, which he built from a single mobile network licence in Zimbabwe into a pan-African telecoms and financial services group with operations across more than 20 countries. His holding company Econet Global has invested in renewable energy, agri-tech and digital platforms across Africa. Masiyiwa is one of Africa’s most prominent business voices globally, sits on several international company boards, and has been a leading advocate for Africa’s digital infrastructure development. He is based between London, New York and Johannesburg.

8. Issad Rebrab (Algeria): approximately $3-4 billion

Issad Rebrab is the founder and CEO of Cevital Group, Algeria’s largest private conglomerate with significant operations in food processing, steel and retail. His sugar refinery at Bejaia is one of the world’s largest. Rebrab has pursued international acquisitions in Europe and has been a consistent advocate for private sector development in an Algerian economy that remains heavily state-dominated. His wealth has fluctuated with oil prices and Algeria’s macroeconomic environment.

9. Othman Benjelloun (Morocco): approximately $2-3 billion

Othman Benjelloun chairs BMCE Bank of Africa (now Bank of Africa Group), one of the continent’s most geographically diversified banking groups with operations across 20 African countries. He also chairs RMA Watanya, one of Morocco’s largest insurance companies. Benjelloun has been a consistent advocate for pan-African financial integration and has built one of the few genuinely continental African banking networks. Morocco’s growing economic weight, its port infrastructure and its critical minerals sector all underpin the commercial environment in which his businesses operate.

10. Koos Bekker (South Africa): approximately $2-3 billion

Koos Bekker transformed Naspers from a South African newspaper and book publisher into a global technology investment company through one pivotal decision: a $32 million investment in Tencent in 2001 that grew into a stake worth over $100 billion at peak valuation. That stake is now held through Prosus, listed in Amsterdam, which gives Naspers shareholders international-exchange access to one of the largest Tencent positions outside of China. Bekker’s legacy is not just the Tencent trade but the institutional culture of long-horizon, contrarian emerging market technology investing that he built at Naspers over two decades.

The broader picture: Africa’s billionaire economy

Africa had approximately 18-20 dollar billionaires in 2026 according to various wealth tracking methodologies. The concentration reflects the continent’s economic geography: Nigeria and South Africa together account for the majority of billionaire wealth, reflecting their status as the continent’s largest and most financially developed economies.

What distinguishes African billionaires from their counterparts in other emerging markets is the degree to which their wealth is anchored in real economy industrial assets rather than financial engineering. Dangote’s refinery, Rabiu’s cement plants, Masiyiwa’s telecoms networks and Motsepe’s mines are all physical infrastructure that Africa’s economies need to function. That industrial character gives African billionaire wealth a development dimension that purely financial wealth does not carry.

The next generation of African billionaires is being built in different sectors. Technology, fintech and digital infrastructure are producing the continent’s fastest-growing private fortunes. Flutterwave’s Olugbenga Agboola, OPay’s founder, and the principals of Wave and MoMo are building companies that could produce the continent’s next billionaires. The critical minerals supply chain, driven by global demand for cobalt, lithium and copper, is generating wealth in the DRC, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania.

The Bigger Picture: Africa’s richest people in 2026 are largely the continent’s richest industrialists. They built physical infrastructure in markets where it was absent, at scale that governments could not achieve, over timelines that required patience that most investors lack. Their wealth is the return on that patience and that risk. The next chapter of African wealth creation will be written by the entrepreneurs who are doing the same thing in digital infrastructure, critical minerals processing and clean energy: building what Africa needs, at African scale, for African markets first and global markets second. Watch those names closely.

Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index / Forbes Africa / Africaspoint research, May 2026