Eswatini billionaire Nathan Kirsh crosses $20 billion, becoming the third African to reach the mark

Nathan Kirsh, the only billionaire in the tiny kingdom of Eswatini, briefly crossed $20 billion on Friday, a threshold just two other Africans have reached. Forbes' real-time index now puts the wealth of the 94-year-old cash-and-carry pioneer at $19.8 billion, placing him alongside Aliko Dangote and Johann Rupert as the only people on the continent above that line. He began the year worth about $9.1 billion.

The leap has one clear cause. In March, Kirsh agreed to sell his Jetro Restaurant Depot business to Sysco, the largest food distributor in the United States, in a deal valued at about $29.1 billion including debt. The transaction, the biggest acquisition in Sysco's history, hands Kirsh's side $21.6 billion in cash and about 91.5 million Sysco shares, a stake of roughly 16% in the enlarged company, and it is expected to close early next year. The sale added around $10 billion to his fortune almost overnight.

The business behind the windfall was built slowly and quietly. Kirsh founded Jetro Cash & Carry in 1976 and acquired Restaurant Depot in 1994, pioneering a warehouse model that let restaurants, caterers and small food businesses buy directly from distribution centers rather than through traditional wholesalers. By last year the operation ran 166 stores across 35 US states, generated about $16 billion in revenue and $2.1 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and had posted three decades of unbroken profit growth.

The man who built it is one of the least visible fortunes in the world. Born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family and raised in southern Africa, Kirsh started with a corn mill, lost most of his money on bad property bets decades ago, and rebuilt everything from a single grocery store in Brooklyn. He spent years operating in near-total obscurity, known to almost no one outside the food-service trade even as his empire swelled.

The milestone reshapes the top of Africa's wealth table. Kirsh has spent much of the year trading places near the summit with Rupert and BUA's Abdulsamad Rabiu as rankings shifted between indices, but the Sysco cash locks in a fortune that is now largely realized rather than tied up in a single private company. Having built in obscurity for seven decades, Kirsh enters the $20 billion club as arguably the least-known member of it anywhere.