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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.
An 81-year-old Benin-born engineer who ran Gabon's oil for 13 years quietly holds ~$1.4 billion of Nigerian oil shares — Seplat and Aradel — through Petrolin vehicles almost no one tracks. Samuel Dossou-Aworet, and the rare edge of the operator who became an owner.
Jean Kacou Diagou helped write the insurance rulebook for 14 African countries — then quit to compete in the market he'd regulated. From a €457,000 start in 1995 he built NSIA into a 12-country bank-insurance group. This week he pruned it, exiting Nigerian life insurance.
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.
Nigeria rejoins FTSE's frontier index on Sept 21, sending global passive capital to ten giants — Dangote Cement, First HoldCo, MTN. But BUA, UBA and Seplat were left out on free float, not size. The paradox: the concentration that makes these owners rich keeps their companies out.
In 1977, Stella Okoli opened a small chemist's shop in Lagos with 5,000 naira and her father's house as collateral. She built it into one of Nigeria's largest drugmakers.
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.
Chevron agreed to sell two Angolan oil blocks to London-listed Energean for $260 million. Then Etu Energias, already a partner, used a right of first refusal to take the deal itself. A masterclass in how insiders win — and a signpost to who owns Africa's oil next.
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.
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.
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.