Cameroon's richest man Baba Danpullo launches Douala fund to manage family fortune

Baba Ahmadou Danpullo, the Cameroonian magnate ranked the wealthiest person in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, has formed a joint venture with the alternative investment manager Kessner Capital Management to create a new fund based in Douala.

The vehicle, named Danpullo Capital, will be charged with growing the assets of the Danpullo family while also deploying capital across Central Africa. It marks the first time the 77-year-old has placed the management of his fortune inside a formal institutional structure run alongside outside professionals.

Kessner Capital Management was founded in 2024 and became operational in March that year, focusing on private credit and structured finance across African markets. It is co-founded by managing partners Bruno-Maurice Monny, a Cameroonian who built his career at J.P. Morgan and BNP Paribas in structured credit and emerging markets, and Benny Osei, a Ghanaian who previously worked at Bloomberg and Leifbridge Capital on multi-asset strategies in frontier economies. The firm has already taken positions in Ghana's gold sector.

A partner with Swiss backing

Kessner is not a standalone boutique. NFG SA, a Swiss private investment firm, agreed in February 2025 to acquire a 76 percent controlling stake in the Cayman-registered manager, accompanied by an investment of up to $50 million intended to expand its debt solutions across the continent. NFG was valued at roughly $2.5 billion following a strategic investment from the Beverly Hills private equity firm NMS Capital Group.

Keith Beekmeyer, NFG's chairman and chief executive, said at the time that the combination would position Kessner as a leading provider of alternative debt solutions for companies across Africa. Monny said the Swiss firm's resources and anchor capital would make Kessner the premier capital partner for African businesses.

The manager launched its first Africa-focused private credit fund last September, targeting small and mid-sized companies with loans running from 30 days to three years in both local and hard currency, across agriculture, infrastructure, technology, renewables and financial services. Its advisory board includes Charles Millon, the former French defence minister, and the Africa finance specialist Colin Rezek. Its chief investment officer brings three decades in commodity trading and trade finance from Louis Dreyfus Commodities, Ameropa, BTG Pactual Bank and Barak Fund Management.

An empire built from a truck

Danpullo began his working life as a truck driver in Cameroon's Northwest Region before moving into tea cultivation and transport. His breakthrough came in the 1980s when he secured import licences and financing, the two resources that allowed him to build outward.

The Bestinver group he controls now spans real estate, cattle ranching, agribusiness and telecommunications. He owns Ndawara Tea Estate, the largest privately held tea plantation in West Africa, and a ranch at Ndawara running thousands of head of cattle. He took over Cameroon Tea Estates through privatisation, holds a stake of about 49 percent in the mobile operator Nexttel alongside Vietnam's Viettel Global, and founded the television channel Dan Broadcasting System. He also holds minority positions in the state cotton company Sodecoton and Airports of Cameroon.

His property holdings extend well beyond Cameroon, into Nigeria, France, Switzerland and South Africa, where his portfolio has included two shopping centres in Cape Town and the Marble Towers in Johannesburg, a 32-storey building standing 152 metres tall.

Forbes Africa has valued his fortune at 547 billion CFA francs, about $930 million, placing him first among the wealthiest people in francophone sub-Saharan Africa. He is a longtime associate of President Paul Biya and has held considerable political influence in Cameroon for decades.

Structuring during a period of pressure

The new fund arrives at an unusually active moment. Danpullo announced in June that he intends to invest 500 billion CFA francs, close to $850 million and nearly the whole of his estimated fortune, in a private airline called Danpullo Air Line together with two private airports in Yaoundé and Douala. Construction on the Yaoundé facility is scheduled to begin in September, with commercial service targeted for 2030.

He is simultaneously locked in a long-running legal fight stemming from a dispute with South Africa's First National Bank, which led to the loss of South African property assets. He pursued recovery by targeting South African companies operating in Cameroon, arguing that the Public Investment Corporation's stakes made MTN Cameroon and the Tiger Brands subsidiary Chococam liable for his losses. Both rejected the reasoning, with MTN calling the garnishment abusive and fraudulent and denying any connection to the South African matter. The Cameroonian presidency ordered official checks into the dispute in May.

Placing family assets inside a managed structure with an institutional partner offers a degree of separation from those disputes and a framework for succession, a question that grows more pressing as the founder approaches his late seventies with holdings spread across several jurisdictions.

Central Africa remains thinly served

The Douala base positions the venture in a region that attracts a small share of the private capital flowing into Africa. Most fund managers concentrate on Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco and South Africa, leaving the CEMAC zone of Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Chad largely without dedicated institutional capital.

The World Bank estimates the financing gap facing African small and mid-sized businesses at about $331 billion. Kessner has framed its strategy around that shortfall, arguing that banks are contracting liquidity at a time when demand for credit is expanding.