Top 10 Richest Women In Africa (2021)
With the introduction of higher educational standards, the women of Africa have started experiencing opportunity and freedom to enterprise more, which was against the old believe that African woman can actually strife to best and peak of their carriers, recently African woman has demonstrated the real vigor in typical Africa, they have been performing expediently well in their various chosen field, this brought Africa to limelight which her contemporaries have been striving to attain.
So we ask: Who Is The Richest Woman In Africa? Ten African women have shown this and have become the top 10 richest African women that employ thousands of people through ventures and firms which has continually help to keep many families and households in shape, the full alacrity African women exhibit has always been of notable and paramount importance.
Top 10 Richest Women in Africa
1. Folorunsho Alakija
Asset Value: $1 Billion
Date of birth: 15th July 1951
Country: Nigeria
Folorunso Alakija she is Africa’s first richest woman. She is the Executive Director of Famfa Oil, an oil and gas exploration company that is worth up to $600 million.
Folorunso Alakija was the secretary of Africa’s earliest investment banks known as the International Merchant Bank of Nigeria in the 1970s. She proceeded to do her studies in fashion design in the United Kingdom and then formed her fashion house firm within Nigeria known as Supreme Stitches in the years 1985, from where she became the largest designer in Nigeria. Then in 1993, the Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida awarded her firm, Famfa Oil, a license in oil prospecting after which the firm turned to be one of the most prolific blocks with Famfa Oil having up to 60% stakes in the block. President Olusegun Obasanjo in the year 2000 acquired in an illegal manner up to 50% stake in the block without proper compensation to Alakija or her firm but this was revoked later by the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
2. Ngina Kenyatta
Asset Value: $1 billion
Date of birth: 24th June 1933
Country: Kenya
She was known popularly as Mama Ngina, who is the widow of the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, and also one of Africa’s richest women. Even though she had undeclared assets, she remains among the richest women in Africa. She is 84 years old and is welcoming and charitable. Her life now is reclusive and she has gained much respect from the citizens of Kenya due to her position in promoting and defending enterprises that include sectors like education, banking, farming, insurance, manufacturing, hospitality, and real estate. She has many stakes, investments, and portfolios that are under her authority.
Mama Ngina Kenyatta is among major shareholders in one of the largest privatized banks in Kenya known as the Commercial Bank of Africa and a chain of hotels known as Heritage. This is an endless list including Brookside Dairies which is an East African leader in the industry with shares that are from East Africa to the Middle East. Others include Media Max which is a media company and Timsales Timber which is among her portfolio. She also has stakes in the estate sector where she developed a 500-acre estate which is among the largest gated community in the region.
3. Hajia Bola Shagaya
Asset Value: $630 million
Date of birth: 10th October 1959
Country: Nigeria
The 58-year-old is the 3rd richest woman in Africa. She runs enterprises and is the CEO of a diversified Nigerian firm known as Bolinus Group International including real estate interests, oil interests, and banking interests. She is a brand member of the Unity Bank Plc where she is also engaged in photography and communications. Her enterprise activities reach the oil and gas sector, finance, and banking which include real estate that has hundreds of townhouses in the choicest neighborhoods of Nigeria with properties in the United States and Europe.
Hajia Bola Shagawa is a board member of a Nigerian group known as the National Economic Partnership for African Development ( NEPAD). She seemed to be aligned with necessary political and military personnel in Nigeria and is very much close to the former Nigerian president Ibrahim Babangida and Patience Jonathan.
4. Wendy Appelbaum
Asset Value: $259.3 million
Date of birth: 1962
Country: South Africa
The 56-year-old is a South African millionaire that became head of the real estate and insurance firm of her father known as Liberty Investors. She was the only daughter of Appelbaum. Donald Gordon is a South African billionaire. Her shares were sold for her to rake in her fortune but when she sold it she now made her personal fortune.
Wendy Appelbaum was one of the Deputy Chairman of Women’s Investment Portfolio Limited which is the first women-dominated firm to be listed in the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) with assets that exceed R1 billion. She made investments in De Mortenson which is a wine estate that is famous in the region of Stellenbosch. She has made philanthropical aid that is more than 23 million US dollars to support the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the Donald Gordon Medical Centre in her father’s memory. The net worth of Wendy Appelbaum by early 2012 is up to $259.3 million which has made her one of the African women.
5. Wendy Ackerman
Asset Value: $190.2 million
Country: South Africa
Wendy Ackerman is a retail tycoon in South Africa and also a Non-Executive Director of Pick N Pay Holdings Limited. Her assets are worth $190.2 million and she runs the Ackerman Family Trust. Her husband has up to 50% of the major grocery of South Africa. The company is worth $3 billion and they have outlets in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Australia, Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique of which Ackerman is the Executive Director.
6. Irene Chamley
Asset Value: $150 million
Date of birth: May 1960
Country: South Africa
The 57-year-old South African woman is a former unionist with assets that are $150 million. She has spent up to 13 years as a negotiator for the National Union of Mine Workers in South Africa after which she later became the Executive Director of MTN which is the largest telecom company in Africa. Now, she is the CEO of Smile Telecoms which is a telecommunications products firm. She has initiated the expansion of MTN across Africa and has played a major role in accumulating Iranian and Nigerian operating licenses for the firm. She was also the director of First Rand Bank and Johnic Communications. Her assets which are up to $150 million made her among Africa’s richest women.
7. Bridget Radebe
Asset Value: $100 million
Date of birth: 26th February 1960
Country: South Africa
She formed the mining firm known as Mmakau Mining in South Africa that has operations in platinum, gold, uranium, chrome mining, and exploration. This 57-year-old woman first became a mine worker. She is now the president of an association known as the South African Mining Development Association and she won an award from the Global Foundation for Democracy.
8. Jane Michuki
Asset Value: $60 million
Country: Kenya
Jane Wanjiru Michuki is a lawyer, business magnate, and investor. She studied for her law degree at the University of Warwick and the Kenya School of Law. Jane started business in 1997. She is the largest stockholder in NSE. The stocks have increased her net worth to $60 million.
Jane is the partner at Kimani & Michuki Advocates.
9. Sharon Wapnick
Asset Value: $43.1 million
Date of birth: 1964
Country: South Africa
The total calculation of her assets is worth more than $43.1 million and she doubles to be among the largest and biggest shareholders in listed loan stocks firms known as October Investments and Premium Properties which were both formed by her father Alex.
10. Elisabeth Bradley
Asset Value: $32 million
Date of birth: 1962
Country: South Africa
Her father Albert Wessels introduced Toyota to South Africa in the year 1961. She was the chairman of Wesco Investments that sold its 25% stake in the South African Toyota to Toyota Motor Corp of Japan for $320 million. She remains the Chairman of Wesco Investments, South Africa.
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That’s all about the richest women in Africa.
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