TOP 10 RICHEST WOMEN IN AFRICA

Africa is a continent where women are generally not allowed freedom to exercise their experience and ideas when compared to their western counterparts. Though with the influx of higher standards of education, African women are beginning to experience freedom and the opportunity to become more enterprising. There are ten women who have proven their worth, standing out to become the top 10 richest women in Africa and employers of thousands of people through companies and ventures that they manage.

Typically, women in Africa have been seen as homemakers or agriculturalists, yet a new breed of empowered women across the continent have managed to forage a way in business, whether through family connections, governmental patronage or sheer entrepreneurship. 

10.ELISABETH BRADLEY

BIRTH DATE:28th DECEMBER 1938

COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$32MILLION

Sitting on more than $32 million is Elisabeth Bradley, whose father Albert Wessels brought Toyota to South Africa in 1961. Her source of wealth is from investments in companies and assetbusinesses , Wesco Investments which was the holding company that she was the chairman of, sold its 25 percent stake in Toyota South Africa to Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp for $320 million, with Bradley pocketing at least $150 million. While remaining as the chairman of Wesco Investments South Africa, she is also the vice-chairman of Toyota South Africa Limited, a board member at blue chip companies such as Standard Bank Group, Hilton Hotel and Roseback Inn and a director of AngloGold.

09.SHARON WAPNICK

BIRTH DATE: 27th DECEMBER 1958

COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$43.1 MILLION

Worth $43.1 million, Wapnick is one of the largest individual shareholders in listed loan stock companies Octodec Investments and Premium Properties, which were both founded by her father Alec. She is also a partner at TWB Attorneys, a Johannesburg-based commercial law firm. Her fortune was made in investments and real estate. As of October 2011, Wapnick stepped into the role of non-executive chairman of Octodec, replacing her father. An attorney, she also has a wealth of experience in the property industry. Her net worth of around $43 million makes her one of the richest women in Africa

08.BRIDGET MOTSEPE RADEBE

BIRTH DATE: 26th FEBRUARY 1960

COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$103 MILLION

Born in 1960, Bridget Radebe is the founder of the successful mining company Mmakau Mining in South Africa with operations in gold, platinum, uranium, coal, chrome mining and exploration. Radebe started out this successful line by first becoming a mine worker herself overcoming gender and inequalities. Now the president of the South African Mining Development Association, she is the older sister of South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe and married to South Africa Justice Minister Jeff Radebe. Radebe’s network is not really known but she received the International Businessperson of the Year Award in 2008 from the Global Foundation for Democracy.

07.IRENE CHARNLEY

BIRTH DATE: 6th MAY 1960

COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$150 MILLION

Irene Charnley is a 52-year-old South African and a former trade unionist with a net worth of $150 million. She spent 13 years as a negotiator for the South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers and later became the Executive Director at MTN, Africa’s largest telecom company. Currently, Irene Charnley is the CEO of Smile Telecoms, a telecommunications products company working out of Mauritius. She  spearheaded MTN’s expansion across Africa and beyond, and played a major role in acquiring Nigerian and Iranian operating licences for the company however, in 2007, she the company under controversial circumstances. In addition to working with MTN, she was also a director of FirstRand Bank and Johnnic and Johnnic Communications. Her estimated net worth of $150 million makes her one of the wealthiest women in Africa.

06.WENDY ACKERMAN

BIRTH DATE: 18th AUGUST 1939

COUNTRY:SOUTH AFRICA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$190.2 MILLION

In a “Wendy” dominated rich list of African wealthiest women, Wendy Ackerman is a South African retail tycoon, a Non-Executive Director of Pick N Pay Holdings Limited. She is worth $190.2 million,she runs the Ackerman Family Trust. Her husband owns about 50 per cent of the major South African grocery chain Pick ‘n’ Pay. The $3 billion South African company has outlets in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Australia, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, with Ackerman acting as Executive Director.

05.WENDY DONNA APPELBAUM

BIRTH DATE:17th NOVEMBER 1953

COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$259.3 MILLION

The only daughter of South African billionaire Donald Gordon, Appelbaum became a director of her father’s insurance and real estate firm Liberty Investors. Upon selling her shares she made her own personal fortune. Previously she was the Deputy Chairman of Women’s Investment Portfolio Limited (Wiphold), the first women’s controlled company to list on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange with then assets in excess of R1 billion. Moneyweb calls her the wealthiest woman in Africa.

In tandem with her husband Hylton, she used these funds to purchase DeMorgenzon, a wine estate in the famous wine region of Stellenbosch. She has in total donated US$23 million to found the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the Donald Gordon Medical Centre, in memory of her father, while she also chairs the South African Women’s Professional Golfers’ Association.

04.HAJIA MUINAT BOLA SHAGAYA

BIRTH DATE: 10 OCTOBER 1959

COUNTRY: NIGERIA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$780 MILLION

Hajia Bola Shagaya (born October 10, 1959) is a Nigerian businesswoman and fashion enthusiast. She is one of the richest women in Africa.

Bola Shagaya has retained links with important figures in various administrations up to the present day and now enjoys a status as a queen of luxury. With interests in oil, banking, communications and photography, she has now also made steps into real estate, building hundreds of town houses for which renters pay $180,000 per year.

Owning properties in Europe and America, she has become one of the biggest players in the lucrative Nigerian oil sector. She is Group Managing Director/CEO of Bolmus Group International and a board member of Unity Bank Plc, while she has served on numerous board committees and currently sits on the board for the National Economic Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD), a Nigerian business group. With over 24 years of active local and international business experience, she had participated in many local and international seminars and workshops, including the Harvard Business School to keep abreast of developments in management techniques.

03.NGINA KENYATTA

BIRTH DATE: 24th JUNE 1933

COUNTRY:KENYA

ESTIMATED WORTH:$950 MILLION

Ngina Kenyatta (born 24 June 1933), popularly known as "Mama Ngina", is the former First Lady of Kenya. She is the widow of the country's first president, Jomo Kenyatta (~1889–1978), and also the mother of President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Having stuck by Kenyatta even during his detention by the British colonial government, and defended the family’s business interests since his death in 1978, Mama Ngina now oversees a serious portfolio of brands and investments, including the largest privately owned Kenyan bank, the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA), and the upmarket hotel chain Heritage. Brookside Dairies, East Africa’s leader in the dairy field with market share reaching from the region to the Middle East is another part of a vast investments empire which also includes media firm Media Max and Timsales Timber.

The latest move is in real estate, where Mama Ngina runs the rule over the construction of the 500-acre Northlands City, which will be the largest upmarket gated community in the region. Though alleged to have been involved with ivory smuggling in the 1970s, she is also engaged in many philanthropic activities. She has never revealed the full extent of her investments.

02.FOLORUNSO ALAKIJA

BIRTH DATE:15th JULY 1951

COUNTRY:NIGERIA

ESTIMATED WORTH: $1.57 BILLION

Folorunso Alakija is a Nigerian businesswoman, one of the richest African women and also one of the richest black women in the world. In 2014 she temporarily unseated Oprah Winfrey as the richest woman of African descent in the world. She is a business tycoon involved in the fashion, oil and printing industries. She is the group managing director of The Rose of Sharon Group which consists of The Rose of Sharon Prints & Promotions Limited and Digital Reality Prints Limited and the executive vice-chairman of Famfa Oil Limited. Alakija is ranked by Forbes as the richest woman in Nigeria with an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion As of 2015, she is listed as the second most powerful woman in Africa after Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the 87th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

After studying fashion design in the UK, she founded her fashion house Supreme Stitches in Nigeria in 1985 in Lagos, becoming the best designer in the country by 1986. Through a friend she became involved in the oil business, being allocated an unwanted oil bloc which later struck oil in commercial quantities and made Alakija’s fortune. This was achieved due to a hook-up with Texaco, which later became Chevron, in 1996.

She later became a more religious individual and now donates a lot of time and money to her Rose of Sharon Foundation, which provides interest free loans to start-up businesses hence the dip in worth in 2018.

01.ISABELLA DOS SANTOS

BIRTH DATE: 20th APRIL 1973

COUNTRY:ANGOLA
ESTIMATED WORTH: $2.7 BILLION

Isabel dos Santos (born 20 April 1973) is an Angolan businesswoman and Africa's richest woman, mostly due to her father's former position as President, facilitating lucrative deals outside the law. In 2013, according to research by Forbes, her net worth had reached more than three billion US dollars, making her Africa’s first billionaire woman. She is the daughter of Angola's former President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017. A Forbes magazine article described in 2013 how Isabel dos Santos acquired her wealth by taking stakes in companies doing business in Angola, suggesting that her wealth comes almost entirely from her family's power and connections. In November 2015, the BBC named Isabel dos Santos as one of the 100 most influential women in the world.

With interests in oil and diamonds, she has shares in Angolan cement company Ciminvest and the Banco Africano de Investimentos.

She originally made her mark in business at the age of 24 by using her father’s patronage to gain lucrative state contracts. She has fostered close business ties with Portugal, with her Maltese-registered investment firm holding a ten per cent stake in Portuguese media conglomerate Zon Multimedia. She also owns major stakes in Portuguese banks Banco Espírito Santo and Banco Português de Investimento, and in energy firm Energias de Portugal. Her estimated wealth reached 3.7 billion in 2016 but dipped due to her father's situation in Angola.