Forbes 2025 Billionaires list: Here are the Africans who made the cut
Forbes has been tracking billionaires worldwide since 1987, when it identified just 140 individuals. Over the years, this number has surged, crossing the 1,000 mark in 2006 and 2,000 in 2017. In 2025, the list reached a new milestone, with 3,028 billionaires globally—an increase of 247 from the previous year. Collectively, these individuals have a net worth of $16.1 trillion, a nearly $2 trillion rise compared to 2024. The United States continues to lead with a record 902 billionaires, followed by China, including Hong Kong, with 516, and India with 205. Forbes compiled the ranking based on stock prices and exchange rates as of March 7, 2025. Here are Africans who made it onto Forbes’ 2025 Billionaires List: Aliko Dangote of Nigeria ranks 83rd on the 2025 Forbes Billionaires List with a net worth of $23.9 billion. As Africa’s richest person, he is the founder and chairman of Dangote Cement, the continent’s largest cement producer, which has operations in 10 African countries. Dangote also owns a fertilizer plant in Nigeria and the recently operational Dangote Refinery. Johann Rupert & family of South Africa hold the 165th spot with a net worth of $14 billion. Johann Rupert is chairman of Swiss luxury goods firm Compagnie Financiere Richemont. The company is best known for the brands Cartier and Montblanc. It was formed in 1998 through a spinoff of assets owned by Rembrandt Group Limited (now Remgro Limited), which his father Anton formed in the 1940s. He owns 7% of diversified investment firm Remgro, which he chairs, as well as 27% of Reinet, an investment holding company based in Luxembourg. Rupert has been a vocal opponent of plans to allow fracking in the Karoo, a region of South Africa where he owns land Nicky Oppenheimer & family of South Africa rank 258th with a net worth of $10.4 billion. Nicky Oppenheimer, heir to the De Beers diamond fortune, sold his 40% of the firm to mining group Anglo American for $5.1 billion in cash in 2012. He was the third generation of his family to run De Beers, and took the company private in 2001. For 85 years until 2012, the Oppenheimer family occupied a controlling spot in the world’s diamond trade. In 2014, Oppenheimer started Fireblade Aviation in Johannesburg, which operates chartered flights. He owns at least 720 square miles of conservation land across South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Nassef Sawiris of Egypt is 289th on the list with $9.6 billion. Nassef Sawiris is an investor and a scion of Egypt’s wealthiest family. In December 2020, he acquired a 5% stake in New York-listed firm Madison Square Garden Sports, owner of the NBA Knicks and the NHL Rangers teams. He runs OCI, one of the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer producers, with plants in Texas and Iowa; it trades on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. Orascom Construction, an engineering and building firm, trades on the Cairo exchange and Nasdaq Dubai. His holdings include a nearly 6% stake in German sportswear giant Adidas. Nassef Sawiris teamed up with Fortress Investment Group’s Wes Edens to purchase the Premier League’s Aston Villa Football Club. Nathan Kirsh of Eswatini ranks 443rd with a net worth of $7.3 billion. The bulk of Nathan “Natie” Kirsh’s fortune comes from U.S.-based Jetro Holdings, which owns restaurant supply stores Jetro Cash and Carry and Restaurant Depot. Kirsh owns 70% of the company, which supplies wholesale goods to bodegas, small stores and restaurants in the United States. Kirsh made his first fortune in his native Swaziland, where he launched a corn milling business in 1958. He expanded into wholesale food distribution in apartheid South Africa, and then into supermarkets and commercial property development. Mike Adenuga of Nigeria, with a net worth of $6.8 billion, ranks 498th. Mike Adenuga, Nigeria’s second richest man, built his fortune in telecommunications and oil production. His mobile phone network, Globacom, is the second-largest operator in Nigeria, with more than 60 million subscribers. His oil exploration outfit, Conoil Producing, operates 6 oil blocks in the Niger Delta. Globacom also built Glo-1, a 6,100-mile-long submarine Internet cable to the U.K. via Ghana and Portugal. Adenuga also owns 74% of publicly traded gasoline firm Conoil and just under 6% of publicly traded Nigerian bank Sterling Financial Holding. Abdulsamad Rabiu of Nigeria ranks 700th with $5.1 billion. He is the founder of BUA Group, a Nigerian conglomerate active in cement production, sugar refining and real estate. In early January 2020, Rabiu merged his privately-owned Obu Cement company with listed firm Cement Co. of Northern Nigeria, which he controlled. The combined firm, called BUA Cement Plc, trades on the Nigerian stock exchange; Rabiu owns 98.2% of it. He also owns 95% of publicly traded food conglomerate BUA Foods. Rabiu, the son of a businessman, inherited land from his father. He set up his own business in 1988 importing iron, steel and chemicals. Naguib Sawiris of Egypt, at 717th with a net worth of $5 billion, built his wealth in telecom and investment, selling Orascom Telecom in 2011 to Russian telecom firm VimpelCom (now Veon) in a multibillion-dollar transaction. He is chairman of Orascom TMT Investments, which has stakes in an asset manager in Egypt and Italian internet company Italiaonline, among others. He also developed a luxury resort called Silversands on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Koos Bekker of South Africa ranks 1072nd with $3.4 billion. He transformed Naspers into a global e-commerce and media giant through its investment in Tencent Holdings and oversees MultiChoice Group and Prosus. He led Naspers to pay a reported $34 million for a third of Chinese Internet firm Tencent Holdings in 2001–perhaps the greatest venture investment ever. In 2019, Naspers put some assets into two publicly-traded companies, entertainment firm MultiChoice Group and Prosus, which contains the Tencent stake. Naspers has sold down its stake in Tencent over the years and today owns less than 25%. Bekker, who retired as the CEO of Naspers in March 2014, returned as chairman in April 2015. Mohamed Mansour of Egypt,