“I wanna be a billionaire, so freaking bad,” those are the words of Bruno Mars on his once popular hit song ‘Billionaire’ track with Travie McCoy, which I think resonated with so many young people, it certainly did with me. I mean who doesn’t have hopes and dreams of driving a Beamer, Benz and Bentley?
Of course getting to a billi will take a lot of hard work and possibly years of grinding and hustling. But thats expected right? thats the only way to build real wealth, as the saying goes “Rome wasn’t built in one day”. So to inspire you on your path to riches, we’ve compiled a list of six of Africa’s richest/wealthiest families/individuals, in no particular order and tell you how they made their riches (from our opinion).
#1 Nigerian Aliko Dangote – This man mages to become the richest individual in Africa for the fourth time in a row from being in the business of flour milling, sugar refining, and food and beverages, so basically he fed people to his way to riches but then again he also has a cement company which in a ever growing African infrastructure, generates a lot of loot.
#2 South African Johan Rupert & family – these folks are in the business of luxury goods, Johann is the head of Compagnie Financiere Richemont, that houses brands like Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Jeager-LeCoultre and Montlblanc to mention a few – never mind not being able to afford these, I cant even pronounce some of these brand names.
#3 Nicky Oppenheimer & Family – DIAMONDS!!!… Enough said.
#4 Egyptian Nassef Sawiris – this guy is the CEO of Egypt’s most valuable publicly-traded company, Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), he even had Bill Gates fork out 2 Billion dollars to cover payments to shareholders who preferred to tender their OCI shares for cash.
#5 Mike Adenuga – just when you thought MTN, Vodacom, and Cell C where the biggest telecoms companies in Africa, Nigeria manages to look like a whole new different continent within this continent. Mr Adenuga is the founder of Nigeria’s second largest mobile phone network, Globacoms with over 24 million subscribers…. He also owns an oil exploration company, trading in one of Nigeria’s most sought after commodity, he probably has a couple of rebel groups in his back pockets but hey that’s just my opinion.
#6 Isabel Dos Santos – daughter of Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, the shy man who was in power for 33 years – despite never being formally elected- he is Africa’s second longest serving head of state…. First thing that came to mind when I learned of that fact, is that this man had some real dictator tendencies going on, maybe thats how they continue to hold on to their wealth…. or the peoples wealth as it were, I’m just saying. but thats not their only claim to wealth, Isabel has a couple of stakes in various blue chip companies such as Angolan mobile phone company Unitel as well as a stake in an Angolan Bank, Banco BIC SA.
One thing is for sure, these folks didn’t get to that status over night, the lesson here is, as a young person you need to learn to have foresight, see beyond your immediate financial state and think longevity and work at investing towards that million dollar status!
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source reference: Forbes
