African Wealth Briefing — Wed., April 29, 2026

Good morning from Billionaires.Africa.

Here is a brief on what we published yesterday.

Aliko Dangote has hit $30 billion on the Forbes billionaires ranking for the first time. Forbes now values him at $30.3 billion, closing a persistent gap between the world's two major wealth trackers — Bloomberg had already placed him above $30 billion for weeks. The milestone is driven by the producing refinery, whose throughput, export revenues, and IPO timeline have forced a revaluation of the Dangote industrial empire that even Forbes could no longer defer. He remains Africa's richest person by a wide margin.

Meanwhile, Hassanein Hiridjee's Axian Group is buying five Letshego banking subsidiaries across Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda. The Malagasy billionaire, whose AXIAN Telecom posted $1.69 billion in revenue in 2025, is now building a pan-African banking platform on top of his telecom and energy infrastructure — a diversification strategy that mirrors what MTN and Safaricom have done but from a different starting point: Madagascar, not Johannesburg or Nairobi.

And Patrice Motsepe's African Rainbow Minerals has signed a nickel off-take deal with Sweden's Boliden to restart the mothballed Nkomati mine in Mpumalanga. The deal gives ARM a guaranteed buyer and Boliden a non-Russian nickel source at a moment when Western supply chains are being rerouted around sanctions and geopolitical risk.

Top Stories

Aliko Dangote hits $30 billion on Forbes for the first time Forbes valued Dangote at $30.3 billion, catching up to Bloomberg's estimate. The refinery — 650,000 bpd, now supplying over 90 percent of Nigeria's petrol demand, with a $40-50 billion IPO targeted for June-July — is the asset that tipped the valuation past the threshold.

Hiridjee's Axian Group buys five Letshego banking units in pan-African push Axian is acquiring Letshego subsidiaries in Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda. The deal extends Hiridjee's footprint from telecom and energy into banking across five new markets in a single transaction.

Motsepe's ARM seals nickel off-take deal with Boliden to restart Nkomati mine The Nkomati nickel mine in Mpumalanga has been mothballed for years. Boliden's off-take commitment gives ARM the revenue certainty to restart operations — and gives the Swedish company a non-Russian nickel supply at a time when that matters.

Dangote is eyeing Ethiopia's new stock exchange for his refinery IPO Ethiopia launched its first stock exchange in January 2025. Dangote listing the refinery there would make it the exchange's first major cross-border offering and extend the IPO's reach into a market of 120 million people with no prior equity culture. The ambition keeps expanding.

Dangote's refinery now supplies 95% of Nigeria's jet fuel. Airlines say middlemen are still price-gouging The refinery has effectively monopolized Nigeria's jet fuel supply. Airlines say the problem is no longer production — it is the intermediaries between the refinery gate and the aircraft wing who are extracting margins that keep ticket prices elevated.

Profiles

Arthur Eze built Africa's biggest private oil portfolio by befriending presidents and almost never drilling a well Eze assembled exploration blocks across West and Central Africa through political relationships rather than technical capability. The Petrobras deal in São Tomé validated the strategy. But governments are now reclaiming blocks where drilling never started — and the portfolio that relationships built may be the portfolio that patience destroys.

This week's Investor Memo is available for Elite subscribers:

→ Investor Memo: The Sawiris Exit — What Africa's Richest Man Leaving London Tells Us About Where Billionaire Wealth Is Moving