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| Folorunso Alakija |
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| Do Santos |
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| Bola Shagaya |
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| Mama Ngina
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.
Folorunso Alakija
Folorunso Alakija is a Nigerian Billionaire
who shares the journey of her life on CNN's African Voices. She was born July
15, 1951 and is a Nigerian Billionaire fashion-designer and Executive Director
at FAMFA Oil, an indigenous Nigerian oil and gas exploration and production
company.
Stories of how her mother used to be a
fabric merchant and she used to help out, and through that she how to market
the fabric her mother sold helped to shape her into the business woman she is
now. After leaving the corporate world in the early 80's (1984), she left to go
the UK
to study fashion designing. She came back to Nigeria in 1985 a year after her
training and started her fashion house-Supreme Stitches at a 3-Bedroom
apartment in Surulere, Lagos and a year after establishing the company, she
emerged as the best Designer in the country in 1986.
She and her younger sister were sent to
school abroad when she was 7 years old to a private school for girls in Northern Wales, and they were the only coloured (black)
girls in the school. And because their fellow mates couldn't pronounce their
names, they coined them names-Flo for Folorunso and Doyle for Doyin. At age 11
she and Doyle moved back to Nigeria
at the request of their parents who didn't want them to lose their African values,
culture and tradition. She married in 1976 and has 4 kids, all boys. Who all
schooled abroad and are all engaged one way or the other in the family
business.
On her involvement in the oil and gas
industry, she explained that through a friend she met while was still actively
involved in the world of fashion, they got involved in the business of oil.
There was an oil bloc no one wanted at that time for several reasons, it was
this same oil bloc they got allocated. They were approached in late 1996 by the
then oil giant Texaco who were sure the bloc had potentials as they had done
their home work well, and after negotiations that spanned 3 months we all
agreed on terms and the rest like they say is history. Later Texaco became
Chevron and they struck oil in commercial quantity and were told the oil had
been collecting in that field for 17 million years.
She became a more religious person at the
age of 40 and from then on found passion in caring for the under-privileged.
And this passion led to her establishing a foundation-Rose of Sharon
Foundation. So her idea is to help provide a platform that aids by helping with
interest free loans to at-least start a business or continue with one.
Dos Santos
Dos Santos,
39, is the oldest daughter of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos. The millionaire
businesswoman is estimated to be worth over $50 million, with interests in oil
and diamonds. She also has shares in Angolan cement company Ciminvest and the
Banco Africano de Investimentos.
She is worth $170 million.
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.
Bola Shagaya
The richest Nigerian businesswoman, 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.
Wendy Appelbaum
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.
Wendy Appelbaum’s net worth as of early 2012
is estimated at $259.3 million.
Mama Ngina
The widow of Kenya’s first president, Jomo
Kenyatta, the former glamorous “mother of the nation” now leads a quiet,
reclusive life away from the spotlight. Yet though she is not to be found on
any African rich list, she has fabulous, mostly undeclared, wealth.
Mama Ngina, now 79, has gained huge respect
from the Kenyan public for her defence and promotion of the family’s business
interests. The Kenyatta family has investments in banking, education, farming,
hospitality, insurance, manufacturing and real estate, though its presiding
matriarch keeps a low profile.
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.
Wendy Ackerman
Retail tycoon Ackerman is worth $190.2
million, with the Ackerman Family Trust run by her and her husband owning about
50 per cent of the major South African grocery chain Pick ‘n’ Pay. The $3
billion company owns outlets in Mozambique,
Nigeria, Namibia, Zambia,
Zimbabwe and Australia, with
Ackerman acting as Executive Director.
Bridget Redebe
The founder of Mmakau Mining, the successful
mining firm with assets in gold, platinum, uranium, coal, chrome and
exploration, Radebe started out by working in mines herself. 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.
She was the first black woman in the country
to found her own mining company, overcoming racial and gender prejudice. While
her net worth is large, it is currently not published. Radebe received the
International Businessperson of the Year Award in 2008 from the Global
Foundation for Democracy.
Sharon Wapnick
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.
Elisabeth Bradley
Bradley, whose father Albert Wessels brought
Toyota to South Africa in 1961, enjoys a net worth of $32 million as a result
of her investments portfolio. In 2008, Wesco Investments, the holding company
that she chairs, 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.
As well as remaining chairman of Wesco
Investments, she is also vice-chairman of Toyota South Africa Limited, a
director of AngloGold and board member at blue chip companies such as Standard
Bank Group, Hilton Hotel and Roseback Inn.
Irene Charney
Charnley, 52, is a former trade unionist who
has amassed a net worth of $150 million. Currently the CEO of Smile Telecoms, a
telecommunications products company working out of Mauritius,
she first made a mark as a negotiator for the National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa.
Later she became Executive Director at MTN, Africa’s
largest teleco.
At MTN she led the company’s expansion
across Africa and beyond, helping to acquire licences from Nigeria to Iran. She was as a result rewarded
with MTN stock worth $150 million, though she left the company under
controversial circumstances in 2007. She has also been a director of FirstRand
Bank, Johnnic and Johnnic Communications.
Her current company, Smile Telecoms, helps
lower-income individuals to have telecommunications and continues a line of
anti-poverty programs Charnley began at MTN.
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