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Emeka Okwuosa's Oilserv helped build the AKK pipeline, Nigeria's gas backbone. Two months later it signed to develop two blocks in Gabon — the moment a contractor becomes a developer. Inside Nigeria's indigenous pipeline champion and its move up the value chain, and across borders.
Mofid Karameh arrived in Nigeria three decades ago carrying a toolbox and started repairing generators. Today his Mikano assembles pickup trucks, boats, surgical syringes, brake pads, face masks and chocolate wafers.
Just 17 investors hold $37.7 billion of Nigerian-listed shares — and two men, Abdulsamad Rabiu and Aliko Dangote, own three-quarters of it. Inside the NGX's $100 Million Club, the concentration behind it, and why the biggest paper fortunes are also the most fragile.
Yerim Sow could have inherited one of West Africa's biggest construction groups. Instead he built his own — 52 businesses across 16 countries in telecoms, banking, hotels and property. This month he's listing his Ivorian bank on the regional exchange, without loosening his grip.
Joseph Siaw Agyepong turned his mother's printing shop into a 76-company, 29-country empire on one idea: governments always pay to have their rubbish removed. But in Nairobi and Mombasa, two of his biggest contracts are now being challenged in court.
The Castel Group is Africa's biggest brewer outside South Africa, sells ~€7 billion a year, and almost no one has heard of it. Now the 99-year-old founder's heirs are at war with the CEO he installed — fought inside a Singapore trust, headed for a courtroom this autumn.
For two decades East Africa imported the clinker that makes cement. Now three billionaires, led by former temple assistant Narendra Raval, are pouring $600 million into making it locally as the multinationals retreat and tariffs bite. Inside the bet on self-sufficiency.
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.
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.
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.
As global brands hunt for factories closer to home than Asia, Dice Group is a live case study in whether Egypt can become the workshop between Europe and America.
MSC, the world's largest shipping line, has committed to a 45-year terminal at Maher Jarmakani's Snake Island Port in Lagos — part of a Nigerian infrastructure bet it puts above $1 billion. Inside a deal that quietly reshapes Nigerian trade.
Julius Rone is targeting September for the go-ahead on Nigeria's first floating LNG plant — a locally-led project designed to capture offshore gas the country has spent decades burning off. The prize is real: turning a wasted resource into export revenue. But so is the risk.
Globacom turns 23 this month, and Mike Adenuga still owns every single share of it. While MTN Nigeria and Airtel Africa listed and raised billions, and 9mobile changed hands twice, Glo stayed wholly private — and slipped from a genuine challenger to a distant third.
Oando just returned to profit — a ₦68.6 billion half-year — and its shares have fallen 28% since May. Both facts are correct, and the gap between them is the whole story.
Patrice Motsepe's African Rainbow Minerals is spending about $925 million to reopen a platinum mine it shut two years ago — a bet that the whole sector's retreat went too far. Inside a contrarian wager, and why the timing, not the thesis, is what's on trial.