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Mo Dewji turned his father's trading house into a $2 billion pan-African conglomerate and became Africa's youngest billionaire. Now, courting Mozambique and Botswana and betting on EV-battery graphite, he wants to triple MeTL to $10 billion by 2035. Inside the expansion.
Hend El Sherbini runs Egypt's largest diagnostics group. This summer she took it private — over her own board's objection that the price was too low, and only after a mandatory bid triggered by buying out Elliott. Inside a contested buyout, and the wave pulling African firms off public markets.
In 2001 Koos Bekker bet about $32 million on a small Chinese firm called Tencent. It became perhaps the greatest venture investment ever. Now, as he sets a 2028 exit amid an investor revolt, the discount and the hunt for "the next Tencent" are the problems he leaves behind.
Morocco has another new billionaire in TGCC founder Mohammed Bouzoubaa, whose 19.3 million shares in the construction group are worth $1.62 billion.
Morocco's royal family holds $17.5 billion of the country's listed companies through one vehicle, Al Mada — and the kingdom minted a brand-new billionaire the same week.
ADNOC's ~$1 billion purchase of Shell's 580 South African petrol stations needed something money couldn't buy: a Black-owned local partner without which the deal couldn't close. It picked Reatile. Inside the quiet, decisive role of the empowerment partner in African dealmaking.
Morocco's royal family controls ~$17.5 billion of listed companies — two-thirds of it mining — through a single vehicle, Al Mada. A study of how great fortunes are built to hold and command entire sectors, not to be counted. A look inside the structure, not the person.
In 1984 Idrissa Nassa moved bicycle parts across West African borders. Today he controls a $9 billion banking group in eleven countries — built by serving the traders big banks ignored — and just pledged to mobilise $712 million for Burkina Faso's hospitals and schools.
Morocco has a new billionaire in SGTM chairman M'hammed Kabbaj, whose 22.2 million shares in the construction group are worth $1.72 billion.
Billionaire Dr. Dre says he uses AI in the studio and that only people who struggle to create see it as a threat.
Johann Rupert's fortune has risen to $17.4 billion from $16.1 billion in March, driven by record jewellery sales at Cartier and Van Cleef.
African Rainbow Minerals, founded by Patrice Motsepe, expects headline earnings to rise 12% to 22% on higher platinum group metals prices.
Nassef Sawiris lifted his OCI stake to 57.5%, closing in on taking private the chemicals empire he spent two years dismantling. And Aliko Dangote is $5 billion richer as his refinery became Europe's biggest supplier of jet fuel and diesel after the Strait of Hormuz closed.
Justin Stanford left school alone as a teenager, built a cybersecurity firm from a Cape Town garage, then spent 15 years seeding the companies that became African tech — VALR, Wasoko, Aerobotics. He isn't a billionaire. He may be the man who built the ground they stand on.
South Africa ships ~80% of its manganese out as raw rock. Daphne Mashile-Nkosi spent two decades and $1.3 billion refusing to — building the world's largest sinter plant on bare Kalahari earth. Inside the beneficiation bet African mining is still arguing about.
Nassef Sawiris spent two years selling off OCI's fertiliser and methanol empire and paying shareholders billions. Now he's buying back the shell at a 2% premium to take it private. The lesson: value is realised by what you sell, not what you hold.
