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In 2002 Mzi Khumalo paid $15.5 million for the Zimbabwean gold mines Lonmin no longer wanted. Within a decade they produced about 100,000 ounces a year and Metallon was the country's largest gold miner. By 2019 the group owed roughly $200 million. The full arc of a contested career.
In December 2024 Chappal Energies paid up to $1.2 billion for Equinor's entire Nigerian business. Less than two years later its founder is in custody, a minority shareholder holds 86 per cent after a $100 million rescue, and the lesson for every Nigerian independent is about financing, not ambition.
Strive Masiyiwa left an exchange that priced Econet at $239 million against $779 million of revenue, and listed its towers, power and property at $1 billion instead. Four months later InfraCo had lost a third. What the $309 million says about his holdings, and about being right too early.
In 1977, GT Ferreira and two partners applied for a banking licence in South Africa. They were refused. So, over the next eight years, they simply built the thing the regulator wouldn't hand them — buying their way into control of a merchant bank and turning it into the foundation of FirstRand.
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.
Saki Macozoma just sold his entire manganese business to Exxaro for R11.7 billion — and kept the trucking, gaming, telecoms and copper. A clean, total exit from one capital-hungry commodity, and a lesson in what a diversified owner should hold and what he should let go.
Ethiopia is one of the hardest markets in Africa for foreign money to enter — the state held telecoms, banking and energy for decades, land cannot be owned, and getting cash out is a struggle. When Japan Tobacco wanted in, it paid $1.4 billion and needed a local partner.
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.
Glencore has just taken a $480 million provision — one of the largest trading losses in its history as a public company — on a single counterparty, and now faces a $2 billion lawsuit from that same former partner.
Uche Ogah registered his own oil company while still an assistant general manager at Zenith Bank, then quit to build Masters Energy — fuel, noodles, tricycles, gas, plastics. The story of a banker who bet on selling everything to everyone, and then ran for office.
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.
Washington is lending nearly $100 million to Ziad Dalloul's Africell — Africa's only American-owned telecom — to buy US kit instead of Huawei's. A deal that turns one operator into the front line of the US-China contest for Africa's networks. The memo on what it means.
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.
Lebashe sits on $2.5 billion of Capitec shares — bought with borrowed money and pledged to two banks as collateral. The week Dangote's fortune jumped $23 billion on a filing, it's the counter-lesson: a headline number and a real fortune are not the same thing. Gross vs. net.
Naushad Merali built one of Kenya's great fortunes buying troubled companies cheap and selling high — most famously turning a mobile venture into a windfall worth hundreds of millions. He died in 2021. This week his heirs stepped back toward manufacturing. Can the gift be inherited?
In one of Africa's smallest economies, Muhammed Jah turned $16,000 — a student stipend and an uncle's loan — into The Gambia's largest conglomerate: its first internet provider, first 3G network, a bank and its first data centre. A national champion built from almost nothing.