Africa Is a Country

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

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.