In this article, we will discuss the 20 richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth. If you want to skip the detailed analysis of the African economy, click 5 Richest Countries in Africa Ranked by Net Worth.
A country’s wealth comprises its assets minus its liabilities. The global wealth spread is concentrated in some areas of the world. As we mentioned earlier, the U.S. has the most billionaires in the world, with a remarkable 735 individuals adding $4.5 trillion to the country’s economy. China ranks number two with 495 billionaires with a total wealth of $1.67 trillion. At the same time, many nations are suffering from extreme poverty. The top 1% in the world have added two-thirds of new wealth to their possessions since 2020. In 2022, global inequality soared for the first time in decades. The World Bank predicts that the UN may fall short of ending extreme poverty by 2030, considering the global economic crisis.
Africa is one of the poorest regions in the world. African countries have suffered from extreme poverty due to political and economic instability in the region. However, many African countries are making progress in reviving their economy. The current GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa is around $2.05 trillion, as reported by the World Bank. As we mentioned earlier, among the richest countries in Africa, only 7 countries have a GDP greater than $100 billion. In this article, our focus is on the richest countries in Africa by net worth. Before we get into the list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth, let’s have a look at the economic outlook of Africa.
Economic Outlook for Africa
Over the years, Africa has suffered from multiple shocks including global, regional, economic, and political. Despite all the adversities, Africa’s economic outlook seems promising. On May 24, the African Development Bank Group shared the African Economic Outlook 2023. The report from the African Development Bank Group forecasts African economies to stabilize at a rate of 4.1% in 2023-24. The projected economic growth for this year is higher than the economic growth rate of 3.8% in 2022. The region’s economic growth is expected to remain resilient despite multiple shocks. Just like other regions of the world, Africa’s growth was debilitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, declining from 4.8% in 2021 to around 3.8% in 2022. However, things are improving as Africa’s economic outlook is projected to have the second-fastest growth rate compared to the rest of the continents. Africa’s projected growth stability in 2023 and 2024 shows a subtle improvement in the global economic conditions driven by China’s re-opening and interest rate adjustments at a slower pace due to tight monetary policy. Regardless of the positive economic indicators, the African Development Bank Group considers increasing inflation, supply chain constraints, and climate issues as potential threats to the growth of the continent. On February 17, during the 36th African Union Assembly in Addis Ababa, the vice president and chief economist of the African Development Bank, Kevin Urama, added that the governments should focus on mobilizing the private sectors to drive economic growth. Urama said:
“The stable outlook projected for 2023–2024 reflects the continuing policy support in Africa, global efforts to mitigate the impact of external shocks, and rising uncertainty in the global economy. To meet the significant financing gaps in Africa, it is imperative to enact policies that can mobilize and leverage private financing for development in Africa.”
African countries need to focus on policy implementation to overcome the crises and ensure that economic growth continues to produce positive outcomes for them.
Africa’s Richest
Sub-Saharan Africa has a population of 1.2 billion. As we mentioned earlier, half of the African population will be under 25 years old by 2050. In the long term, the African youth can harness their potential and human capital to eradicate poverty in the region. With a market of 1.2 billion people, Africa is one of the largest free trade regions in the world. The positive economic outlook indicates that Africa is utilizing its human capital and natural resources.
Some of the Sub-Saharan African countries rank among the richest countries in the world, including Egypt, South Africa, and Nigeria. Keeping up with the challenges, a number of African countries are showing resilience and making developments. As reported by the World Bank, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of Congo grew at 5.2%, 6.7%, and 8.6% in 2022, respectively. The World Bank projects the economic growth of Africa excluding large countries at 4.3% in 2023, which is set to dilate to 5.1% and 5.2% in 2024 and 2025, respectively. In 2023, Central African countries are expected to have weak economic performance with a growth rate expected at 2.7%. Whereas, the West African countries are projected to grow at 5.5% in 2023.
Africa’s wealthiest people have a vital role to play in the region’s economy. African billionaires have an accumulated net worth of $81.5 billion. Among 54 African countries, billionaires from just seven countries made it to the Forbes list of Africa’s billionaires. South Africa and Nigeria are two of the wealthiest African nations and the richest African billionaires hail from these two countries. On January 30, Forbes shared the list of Africa’s billionaires, and Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote was ranked the richest on the list with a net worth of $13.5 billion. Dangote remains the richest African for the 12th straight year. South African luxury goods tycoon Johann Rupert shares second place with a net worth of $10.7 billion. Ranked in the third spot, another South African magnate Nicky Oppenheimer has a net worth of $8.4 billion from his metals and mining business.
Developments in Africa
On March 20, Anadolu Ajansı reported that Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, wrote off the debt of African nations worth $20 billion. On July 27, Reuters reported that Russia has granted relief on debt worth $684 to the Somalian government. The Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia Salah Jama pointed out that both governments have agreed to the debt relief and the majority of debt would be immediately written off while the remaining part would be subjected to rescheduling of payments. According to Anadolu Ajansı, President Putin stated:
“Additional opportunities are opened up by the process of establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which began in 2021, which in the future will become a continental market with a total GDP of more than $3 trillion.”
Despite Russia’s focus on the war in Ukraine, the Russian government is looking into opportunities in Africa. During the Russia-Africa Summit held on July 27 and 28, Putin announced a strong strategic alliance with African countries. Putin added that their attention to Africa is steadily growing. All the participating African countries signed a joint declaration that will create a balanced and stable multipolar world order for the African continent. This is a huge development for Africa.
Many African nations have decided to side with Russia, however, countries such as South Africa are in the midst of binding relations with both Russia and the U.S. The South African government has been neutral on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On May 18, CNBC reported that tensions escalated between the U.S. and South Africa when U.S. Ambassador Reuben Brigety openly accused Pretoria of supplying guns to Russia. Reuben pointed out that “Lady R,” a Russian vessel sanctioned by the U.S., was docked outside Cape Town at Simon’s Town naval base in December 2022. However, South Africa’s government denied any involvement in the sale of arms to Russia and stated the event as factually incorrect. On August 14, Bloomberg reported that South Africa will keep its preferential access to U.S. markets despite the tension between the two countries, according to BRICS ambassador, Anil Sooklal. The reason for this is that hundreds of American firms are involved in business in South Africa. However, U.S. lawmakers continue to push the Biden administration to review the White House stance on South Africa.
Some of the leading South African companies operating around the world include Sibanye Stillwater Limited (NYSE:SBSW) and DRDGOLD Limited (NYSE:DRD). Sibanye Stillwater Limited (NYSE:SBSW) is one of the leading metal producers in the world. The company is transitioning its energy sources to renewable sources. In the company’s Integrated Report 2022, Sibanye Stillwater Limited (NYSE:SBSW) posted that it had achieved an A-score for its CDP climate change submission. By 2025, Sibanye Stillwater Limited (NYSE:SBSW) expects 25% Scope 2 emissions and 100% by 2038. On the other hand, DRDGOLD Limited (NYSE:DRD) is doing a great job as the South African gold miner reported 1,329 kg of gold production for the quarter ended on March 31, 2023. The company continues to increase its gold production capacity and capitalize from increasing gold prices in the market. On February 15, DRDGOLD Limited (NYSE:DRD) announced the fiscal year 2023 will be the 16th consecutive year that it will have paid a dividend. South African companies are key drivers of the country’s economy. Another prominent African company and one of the largest gold miners in the world is Gold Fields Limited (NYSE:GFI). As of August 16, Gold Fields Limited (NYSE:GFI) is worth $11.77 billion on the open market and has returned more than 37% to investors over the past 12 months.
Apart from African companies, foreign companies have also played a big role in South Africa’s economy. For instance, the e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is running successful operations in South Africa. Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) subsidiary Amazon Web Services, Inc. has had a huge impact on South Africa’s economy. Jeff Bezos’ company is helping South African public sector organizations to engineer solutions to overcome different challenges. According to Amazon Web Services, Inc., the company’s investment in the country added ZAR 12 billion to South Africa’s GDP from 2018 to 2022. AWS will add an estimated ZAR 68 billion more to South Africa’s GDP by 2029, according to a new economic impact study (EIS) from AWS. On August 3, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced its earnings for the second quarter of 2023. AWS segment made a significant stride in sales with a 12% increase year over year to $22.1 billion. The company posted earnings per share of $0.65, surpassing the consensus by $0.31. AWS has been a remarkable segment for the company and continues to progress in cloud computing. Here are some of the comments from the Q2 2023 earnings call:
“AWS remains the clear cloud infrastructure leader with a significant leadership position with respect to number of customers, size of partner ecosystem, breadth of functionality and the strongest operational performance.
These are important factors for why AWS has grown the way it has over the last several years and for why AWS has almost doubled the revenue of any other provider. I’ve talked to many AWS customers over the years and continue to do so. And while all these factors I mentioned have been big drivers of the business’ success, AWS customers tell us that as importantly, they care about the very different customer focus and orientation in AWS may see elsewhere. As the economy has been uncertain over the last year, AWS customers have needed assistance cost optimizing to withstand this challenging time and reallocate spend to newer initiatives that better drive growth. We’ve proactively helped customers do this.
As a result, we’ve seen AWS’ revenue growth rate stabilize during Q2 where we reported 12% year-over-year growth. The AWS team continues to innovate and change what’s possible for customers at a rapid clip. You can see across the array of AWS product categories where AWS leads in compute, networking, storage, database, data solutions and machine learning, among other areas, and the continued invention and delivery in these areas is pretty unusual.
Today, more than 50,000 customers use AWS’ Graviton chips and AWS Compute instances, including 98 of our top 100 Amazon EC2 customers, and these chips have about 40% better price performance than other leading x86 processors. The same sort of reimagining is happening in generative AI right now. Generative AI has captured people’s imagination, but most people are talking about the application layer, specifically what OpenAI has done with ChatGPT. It’s important to remember that we’re in the very early days of the adoption and success of generative AI, and that consumer applications is only one layer of the opportunity. We think of large language models in generative AI as having 3 key layers, all of which are very large in our opinion and all of which AWS is investing heavily in.”
Roman Yanushevsky/Shutterstock.com
Our Methodology
To determine the wealthiest countries in the world, we analyzed data from Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Databook 2022. Credit Suisse’s database calculates the wealth of countries, considering their financial and non-financial assets while removing the value of debt from it. We have compared the data of 2021 and 2010 to reflect the rate at which a country’s wealth has increased over the decade. We have ranked the country higher with the highest wealth as of 2021. Here is the list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
20 Richest Countries in Africa Ranked by Net Worth
20. Madagascar
Total Wealth in 2021: $30 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $13 Billion
Percentage Change: 130.77%
Officially the Republic of Madagascar is an island country which is situated on the southeastern coast of Africa. Madagascar is one of the largest island countries in the world. The country’s total wealth in 2021 came in at $30 billion, up 130.77% compared to 2010. Madagascar ranks 20th on our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
Some of the leading companies operating in Africa include Gold Fields Limited (NYSE:GFI), DRDGOLD Limited (NYSE:DRD), and Sibanye Stillwater Limited (NYSE:SBSW).
19. Namibia
Total Wealth in 2021: $31 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $11 Billion
Percentage Change: 181.82%
Homeland to some of the most diverse wildlife in the world, Namibia is located in southwest Africa. The country is known for its wildlife and the Namib Desert along its Atlantic Ocean coast. In 2021, the country’s total wealth stood at $31 billion, which makes it one of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
18. Senegal
Total Wealth in 2021: $41 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $19 Billion
Percentage Change: 115.79%
Senegal is a West African country with a population of 17.3 million. The capital, Dakar, is an economic and administrative hub of the country. Senegal is one of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth, with total wealth in 2021 amounting to $41 billion.
17. Libya
Total Wealth in 2021: $44 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $56 Billion
Percentage Change: -21.43%
The North African country, Libya, is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north and Chad to the south. Egypt and Algeria are neighbors to the east and west, respectively. Libya’s wealth has depreciated by -21.43% over the last 10 years. With a total wealth of $44 billion in 2021, Libya is ranked 17th on our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
16. Cameroon
Total Wealth in 2021: $46 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $18 Billion
Percentage Change: 155.56%
Cameroon is a Central African country, situated around the Gulf of Guinea. It has assorted terrain and wildlife. Cameroon’s total wealth in 2021 was $46 billion, a 155.56% increase as compared to 2010 when the country’s wealth was $18 billion. The country is among the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
15. Uganda
Total Wealth in 2021: $49 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $15 Billion
Percentage Change: 226.67%
Located in East Africa, Uganda is a landlocked country with a diverse area that includes the snow-capped Rwenzori Mountains and Lake Victoria. The immense wildlife is another prominent thing about the country. In 2021, Uganda had a net worth of $49 billion and therefore makes it to our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
14. Angola
Total Wealth in 2021: $55 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $34 Billion
Percentage Change: 61.76%
Angola has a population of 35.5 million with a vast landscape covering tropical Atlantic beaches, rivers, and the Sub-Saharan desert. The country’s total wealth in 2021 came in at $55 billion, up 61.76% compared to 2010. Angola ranks 14th on our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
13. Democratic Republic of the Congo
Total Wealth in 2021: $59 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $15 Billion
Percentage Change: 293.33%
The Democratic Republic of Congo is the largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa and is about the same size as Western Europe. The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the largest countries in the world with a population of 99 million. In 2021, the country’s total wealth stood at $59 billion, which makes it one of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
12. Mauritius
Total Wealth in 2021: $63 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $32 Billion
Percentage Change: 96.88%
Mauritius is located alongside the Indian Ocean and is known for its beaches, reefs, and lagoons. Rainforests, waterfalls, and different hiking trails make it a diverse landscape. With a total wealth of $63 billion in 2021, Mauritius is ranked 12th on our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
11. Zimbabwe
Total Wealth in 2021: $71 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $9 Billion
Percentage Change: 688.89%
Zimbabwe has made a whopping growth of 688.89% from 2010 to 2021. In 2010, the country had only $9 billion of total wealth and in 2021 it stood at $71 billion. With diverse wildlife and dramatic wildlife, Zimbabwe ranks among the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
10. Tanzania
Total Wealth in 2021: $122 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $31 Billion
Percentage Change: 293.55%
Tanzania is home to some of the biggest wild animals including elephants, rhinos, buffalos, lions, and leopards. The country’s total wealth in 2021 stood at $122 billion, up by a staggering 293.55% compared to 2010. Tanzania ranks 10th on our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
9. Ghana
Total Wealth in 2021: $130 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $49 Billion
Percentage Change: 165.31%
Officially the Republic of Ghana is a country situated in West Africa. The country’s total wealth in 2021 came in at $130 billion, up 165.31% compared to 2010. Ghana ranks among the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
8. Tunisia
Total Wealth in 2021: $174 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $108 Billion
Percentage Change: 61.11%
Tunisia has a population of 12.3 million and is the northernmost country in the African continent. In 2010, the country had $108 billion of total wealth and in 2021 it stood at $174 billion. Tunisia makes it to the eighth place on our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
7. Ethiopia
Total Wealth in 2021: $228 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $33 Billion
Percentage Change: 590.91%
Ethiopia has remarkably grown its wealth by 590.91% from 2010 to 2021. In 2010, the country had $33 billion of total wealth compared to $228 in 2021. Also known as the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is one of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
6. Algeria
Total Wealth in 2021: $284 Billion
Total Wealth in 2010: $157 Billion
Percentage Change: 80.89%
Algeria has some historical landmarks from the Romans and Ottomans. The country’s total wealth in 2021 was $284 billion, up 80.89% compared to 2010. Algeria is placed sixth on our list of the richest countries in Africa ranked by net worth.
For investors looking to enter the African market, some stocks to look up include Gold Fields Limited (NYSE:GFI), DRDGOLD Limited (NYSE:DRD), and Sibanye Stillwater Limited (NYSE:SBSW).
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Disclosure: None. 20 Richest Countries in Africa Ranked by Net Worth is originally published on Insider Monkey.
