No one made bigger bucks in Africa in 2013 than the continent’s richest man, Aliko Dangote. The Nigerian cement, sugar and flour mogul saw his fortune grow by $10.1 billion, or 79% through Wednesday, the 31st of December 2013. The biggest catalyst was his Dangote Cement shares which has experienced a 74% run-up over the last 12 months. He is now worth $22.9 billion according to FORBES’s most recent statistics, up from $12.8 billion at the end of December 2012.
In April, the 57-year-old tycoon announced that his Dangote Group, West Africa’s largest company, would construct a private oil refinery in Nigeria. When completed, it will have a refining capacity of 400,000 barrels per day and will reduce Nigeria’s dependence on oil imports. Dangote’s name attracts big money, and several local and international financiers quickly lined up to back him on the project. He subsequently raised $4.5 billion. He is also aggressively expanding his publicly traded Dangote Cement across the continent, announcing plans September and October to build new plants in Kenya and Niger at a cost of $750 million.
The second biggest gainer in dollar terms in 2013 was Angolan investor Isabel Dos Santos, the eldest daughter of Angola’s president. FORBES’ estimate of her net worth grew by $2.8 billion during 2013 to $3.7 billion, but not because her wealth grew dramatically over that period. FORBES was able to uncover and verify more assets owned by Dos Santos, 41, between December 2012 and August 2013; and wrote about those assets here. She is now Africa’s richest woman.
Nigeria’s richest woman, Folorunsho Alakija, controls Famfa Oil Limited, an oil exploration company that owns a lucrative stake in the Agbami deepwater oilfield. FORBES puts her net worth at $2.5 billion, up from $600 million in December 2012, after she first appeared on the FORBES list of Africa’s richest people. Her increased net worth is a result of new information made available to Forbes on the true value of her company’s interest in Agbami, information that has been verified by analysts in the industry.
Africa’s wealthiest media mogul, Koos Bekker, CEO of South Africa-based media giant Naspers, saw his fortune nearly in the past year –from $450 million to $1.2 billion — as a result of a huge run-up in the stock and additional stock purchases by Bekker. Naspers’ shares rose more than 100% in 2013.
In the case of Abdulsamad Rabiu, Africa’s newest billionaire, we estimate he is $550 million richer than Forbes’ estimate in December 2012, primarily because Forbes Africa was given exclusive access to new information regarding his holdings.
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