AfricaIs aCountry

African Booty

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

African Booty

By
Sean Jacobs

Sean Jacobs
Forbes Magazine–fresh from its cover story last week about Barack Obama’s “Kenyan, anti-colonialist tendencies” which he inherited from his “Luo tribesman father”–gets back to its normal business: reminding us who has real power. Its annual list of the world’s wealthiest people was published this week. As usual they published two lists: the 400 richest Americans (which contains little surprises);  that list is then combined with the rest of the globe’s into a 1000-person list of “The World Billionaires.”  A few of the world’s super wealthy who list themselves as citizens of African countries (whether they live there or not) make the cut:*

127 Nassef Sawiris (Egypt), worth US$5.1bn from construction  (above).
154 Nicky Oppenheimer & family (South Africa), $5bn from diamond mining.
307 Onsi Sawiris (Egypt), father of Nassef, $3.1bn also from construction.
374 Naguib Sawiris (Egypt), brother of Nassef, $2.4bn from telecoms.
421 Johann Rupert & family (South Africa), $2.3bn from luxury goods.
421 Patrice Motsepe (South Africa), $2.3bn from mining.
463 Aliko Dangote (Nigeria), $2.1bn from sugar, flour and cement.
655 Samih Sawiris (Egypt), brother of Nassef, worth $1.5bn from hotels.

We’re not celebrating. We’re not getting any of that money.

* We wanted to, but didn’t have time to work through the list and highlight those wealthy non-Africans who also derive massive profits from the continent. For starters we known that 2 of the top 10–Bill Gates and Lakshmi Mittal–have economic interests on the continent.

Further Reading

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.

Empire’s middlemen

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.

À qui s’adresse la CAN ?

Entre le coût du transport aérien, les régimes de visas, la culture télévisuelle et l’exclusion de classe, le problème de l’affluence à la CAN est structurel — et non le signe d’un manque de passion des supporters.

Lions in the rain

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.