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Abdulsamad Rabiu has had a remarkable run. The Nigerian industrialist is now Africa's third richest person, according to Forbes' 2026 ranking of the continent's billionaires, after his estimated net worth surged 120% to $11.2 billion over the past year.
That is a gain of $6.1 billion in 12 months, the biggest jump of any billionaire on the entire Africa list. A year ago, Rabiu ranked sixth. He has now leapfrogged three places and sits just behind South African luxury goods tycoon Johann Rupert, who is worth $16.1 billion. He has also left compatriot Mike Adenuga behind. Adenuga, chairman of telecom company Globacom, ranks sixth with a net worth of $6.5 billion.
The engine behind Rabiu's climb is his publicly listed cement business. Shares of BUA Cement surged 135% over the past year on the Nigerian Exchange, where stocks have been on a historic run. The NGX rose 81% to record highs over the same period, propelled by record corporate profits and a government directive requiring Pension Fund Administrators to increase their equity holdings. BUA Cement is Nigeria's second-largest cement producer and the asset that accounts for the bulk of Rabiu's paper wealth. He owns about 98% of the company directly and through three other companies.
The decision to list his companies has been central to how fast Rabiu's wealth has grown. BUA Cement listed on the NGX in January 2020, followed by BUA Foods in January 2022, milestones that have since transformed Rabiu into one of Africa's wealthiest industrialists. Before those listings, his fortune was harder to track and his rankings reflected it. At the start of the 2020s, he sat outside Africa's top five. By 2023, he had climbed to fourth on the continent with a net worth of $7.6 billion, only to slip back to sixth in 2024 as his fortune fell to $5.9 billion. Then came the NGX bull run, and Rabiu's trajectory changed entirely.
BUA Foods has added to the momentum. The company posted a 91% increase in profit after tax for the 2025 fiscal year, climbing to 507.73 billion naira from 265.99 billion naira in the previous year. Revenue expanded 18% to 1.80 trillion naira. Rabiu controls 93% of BUA Foods, which operates across sugar refining, flour milling, pasta production and rice processing.
He is not standing still on the investment front either. BUA partnered with Viteral Integrated Milling Systems to build a 40-tonne-per-hour animal feed mill in Kano state, expected to be completed by mid-2027. A deal with Italian firm Fava S.p.A. will expand annual pasta production by 400,000 metric tonnes through the installation of nine new long-cut production lines. Rabiu also held talks with CBMI Construction Co., Ltd. to explore establishing a new manufacturing line in northern Nigeria.
In December 2025, Rabiu distributed approximately $20.7 million in cash rewards to long-serving employees of BUA Group, marking one of the largest employee reward programs ever announced by a privately held Nigerian company. The payouts were made at the BUA Night of Excellence Long Service Awards ceremony at Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos.
There are also signs of a generational handover taking shape within the group. BUA Foods announced the appointment of Isyaku Abdulsamad Rabiu, also known as Khalifa Rabiu, as Chief Officer of Global Procurement and Strategic Operations, effective Jan. 29, 2026.
Rabiu, who was born in Kano and attended Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, founded BUA International in 1988 as a commodity trading outfit importing rice, edible oil, flour, iron and steel. Over the decades that followed, he built it into a manufacturing conglomerate, breaking into cement through the acquisition of a controlling stake in Cement Company of Northern Nigeria in 2009 and later commissioning a $900 million cement plant in Edo State. He broke an eight-year monopoly in Nigeria's sugar industry in 2008 by commissioning what was then the second-largest sugar refinery in sub-Saharan Africa.
He now ranks second among Nigeria's billionaires, behind only Aliko Dangote, who leads the Africa list with an estimated net worth of $28.5 billion.
