Africa’s billionaire class is growing at a pace that is hard to ignore. According to the Forbes 2026 Africa Billionaires list, released on 9 March 2026, the continent’s 23 billionaires now hold a combined record $126.7 billion, up 21% from the previous year. Surging equity markets in Nigeria and South Africa, recovering currencies, and strong corporate earnings are the key forces driving that collective wealth higher. Nigeria, for the first time in years, has overtaken South Africa in total billionaire wealth, with four Nigerian entries totaling $47.5 billion, compared with South Africa’s seven-strong $43 billion. Here is a look at the ten richest men on the continent, ranked from lowest to highest net worth.
10. Michiel Le Roux — $3.8 Billion
South African banking entrepreneur Michiel Le Roux co-founded Capitec Bank in 2001, at a time when he believed South Africa’s traditional banking sector was failing ordinary people. That conviction paid off spectacularly. As of September 2025, Capitec serves 24.1 million individuals, nearly 38% of South Africa’s population, and operates the country’s largest branch network with 880 locations. Le Roux holds approximately 11% of the JSE-listed bank and grew his net worth from $3.0 billion to $3.8 billion on the back of a 57% jump in Capitec’s share price, outpacing the broader Johannesburg index’s 45% gain. Capitec’s profits are projected to reach $1.07 billion in the 2026 financial year.
9. Mohamed Mansour — $4.0 Billion
Egyptian industrialist Sir Mohamed Mansour chairs the Mansour Group, a conglomerate his family has built into one of Egypt’s most powerful business empires, with roughly 60,000 employees and control over nine of Egypt’s top Fortune 500 companies. The group runs General Motors dealerships in Egypt, holds exclusive Caterpillar distribution rights across eight African nations, and operates Metro Markets, Egypt’s largest supermarket chain. Mansour also controls McDonald’s franchise rights in Egypt. Beyond retail and manufacturing, his family’s investment arm, Man Capital, holds stakes in Airbnb and Spotify, while his consortium owns the Major League Soccer franchise San Diego FC, which finished first in the Western Conference in its 2025 debut season.
8. Patrice Motsepe — $4.3 Billion
South Africa’s Patrice Motsepe built the continent’s first Black-owned mining house from the ground up. His company, African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), spans iron ore, manganese, platinum group metals, thermal coal, copper, and nickel. In the first half of its 2026 financial year, ARM posted an operating profit of R1.9 billion, a sharp turnaround from a R409 million loss in the prior-year period, on revenues that climbed 31% to R8.4 billion. Motsepe’s wealth extends well beyond mining: he chairs African Rainbow Capital, which holds stakes in more than 40 companies, and owns Mamelodi Sundowns football club. He is also the incumbent president of the Confederation of African Football, re-elected in March 2025.
7. Naguib Sawiris — $5.6 Billion
The eldest of Egypt’s billionaire Sawiris brothers, Naguib Sawiris, built his fortune in telecoms before pivoting aggressively into gold mining. He previously built Orascom Telecom Holding into one of the world’s largest emerging mobile operators, with networks stretching from Algeria to North Korea, and then sold the bulk of the business to Russia’s VimpelCom in a deal that generated more than $5 billion in total proceeds. Today, his wealth is primarily held in La Mancha Resources, a gold-focused investment vehicle with major stakes in London-listed Endeavor Mining and ASX-listed Evolution Mining. Bloomberg has valued Sawiris considerably higher than Forbes’ $5.6 billion, briefly placing him above $10 billion in late 2025 before a gold price pullback trimmed that figure. He committed a further $400 million to gold positions in early 2026.
6. Mike Adenuga — $6.5 Billion
Nigerian billionaire Mike Adenuga is one of the continent’s most private businessmen, rarely granting interviews or public appearances. His two core assets tell a compelling story on their own. Globacom, the telecom company he launched in 2003, is Nigeria’s second-largest mobile operator with 22.6 million subscribers as of March 2026, and it operates across Nigeria, Ghana, and Bénin. His oil business, Conoil Producing, made history in 1991 as the first indigenous Nigerian company to strike commercial crude oil. Adenuga also funded Glo-1, the first wholly-owned West Africa-to-UK submarine fiber-optic cable. He holds Nigeria’s highest civilian honor, the GCON, and France’s Légion d’Honneur at the Commandeur rank.
5. Nassef Sawiris — $9.6 Billion
Egypt’s richest man, Nassef Sawiris, runs a business empire that spans nitrogen fertilizer production, construction, Premier League football, and sportswear. He chairs Orascom Construction and, through OCI Global, controls one of the world’s largest fertilizer operations, with major production facilities in Texas and Iowa. He holds approximately 6% of Adidas AG and, in a significant development, Adidas formally proposed him as its new chairman in March 2026, a position he assumed at the company’s annual general meeting in May 2026. Sawiris also co-owns Aston Villa Football Club alongside Wes Edens. He was the only major African billionaire to keep his net worth essentially flat between 2025 and 2026, as an Adidas share price decline due to weaker-than-expected profit guidance offset gains elsewhere.
4. Nicky Oppenheimer — $10.6 Billion
South African businessman Nicky Oppenheimer represents the third generation of one of Africa’s most storied dynastic families. His grandfather, Ernest Oppenheimer, founded Anglo American in 1917, and the family subsequently built De Beers into the dominant force in global diamond supply. In August 2012, Oppenheimer sold the family’s 40% stake in De Beers to Anglo American for $5.2 billion in cash, ending an 85-year era. He has since redeployed that capital through private equity vehicle Tana Africa Capital, his family office E. Oppenheimer & Son, and Oppenheimer Generations. His portfolio includes stakes in Interswitch, the pan-African payments company, and Nigerian grocery retailer Sundry Markets. He also owns Tswalu Kalahari, the largest private game reserve in South Africa.
3. Abdulsamad Rabiu — $11.2 Billion
Abdulsamad Rabiu is the biggest wealth story on the 2026 Forbes Africa list, full stop. His net worth jumped by $6.1 billion, a 120% increase, the largest gain of any African billionaire in the ranking. The engine behind that surge was BUA Cement, whose shares on the Nigerian Exchange climbed 135% over the year. Rabiu chairs BUA Group, whose listed businesses include BUA Cement, Nigeria’s second-largest cement producer, and BUA Foods, the country’s largest sugar refiner. The broader Nigerian Exchange All-Share Index closed calendar 2025 up 51.19%, and BUA Group’s companies rode that wave hard. Bloomberg, which values his privately held assets more aggressively than Forbes, briefly tracked Rabiu above $18 billion in early May 2026, a figure that, if sustained, would place him ahead of Johann Rupert.
2. Johann Rupert — $16.1 Billion
South Africa’s Johann Rupert chairs the luxury goods group Compagnie Financière Richemont, which he founded in 1988. Richemont owns some of the world’s most recognizable luxury brands, including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Vacheron Constantin, IWC Schaffhausen, Montblanc, and Jaeger-LeCoultre. In its 2025 financial year, Richemont reported sales of €21.4 billion and a net cash position exceeding €8 billion. Nine-month revenues to December 2025 reached €17 billion, up 10% at constant exchange rates. Rupert controls 51% of Richemont’s voting rights through dual-class shares, despite holding just over 10% of the economic capital. He also chairs JSE-listed investment holding company Remgro, with stakes in FirstRand, Mediclinic, and more than 30 other businesses.
1. Aliko Dangote — $28.5 Billion
Aliko Dangote has held the title of Africa’s richest man for 15 consecutive years, and his lead over the rest of the continent’s billionaires has never looked more secure. Forbes placed him at $28.5 billion in its March 2026 release; Bloomberg’s real-time tracker pushed that figure above $30 billion for the first time on 28 April 2026, and simultaneously above $32.5 billion by late April, placing him among the world’s 70 wealthiest individuals and the world’s wealthiest Black person. Dangote is the founder and chairman of Dangote Group, whose publicly listed anchor, Dangote Cement, doubled its profits in 2025 to a record one trillion naira. His Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lekki, Lagos, the world’s largest single-train refinery at 650,000 barrels per day, hit nameplate capacity in February 2026, and Nigeria became a net petrol exporter in March 2026 as a direct result. A $400 million deal signed with China’s XCMG in October 2025 will expand the refinery’s capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2029. Dangote is also planning a pan-African IPO of roughly 10% of the refinery, targeting a July 2026 listing at an implied valuation of $20-$25 billion.
All net worth figures are sourced from the Forbes 2026 Africa Billionaires list. Bloomberg Billionaires Index figures, where cited, reflect real-time market valuations and will differ due to varying methodologies in valuing privately held assets.
