African Wealth Briefing — Fri., May 8, 2026

Good morning from Billionaires.Africa.

Here is a brief on what we published yesterday.

The most consequential story for foreign investors evaluating African banking and large-cap industrial equities was the Bloomberg-Forbes divergence on Abdul Samad Rabiu. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index placed Rabiu at $19.1 billion on May 7, ranking him as Africa’s second-richest man behind Aliko Dangote and ahead of Johann Rupert at $17.7 billion. Forbes still ranks Rabiu fourth at $15.3 billion. The $3.8 billion gap is not a methodological error. Bloomberg uses daily mark-to-market on his BUA Cement and BUA Foods stakes, both of which have rallied dramatically in 2026 — BUA Cement is up 134 percent year-to-date, BUA Foods up 37 percent. Forbes uses a more conservative quarterly methodology that lags the rally. For investors holding either stock, the divergence is a useful reminder that NGX equities have repriced faster than the global wealth trackers reflect.

In Nigerian banking, Femi Otedola’s FirstHoldCo posted a 72 percent jump in Q1 2026 pretax profit to N321 billion ($233.5 million), overtaking GTCO and Access Holdings to become Nigeria’s second most profitable bank behind Zenith. Eighteen months after Otedola took the chairmanship, the bank that was widely written off as a tier-one laggard is producing the highest return on equity in the FUGAZ group. The structural read: Nigerian banking concentration is shifting. The Cardoso reset we covered earlier in the week is producing winners as well as losers, and FirstHoldCo is one of the clearest current beneficiaries.

In Algeria, Issad Rebrab’s Cevital launched a $600 million sugar beet farming and refining project in the Ghardaïa region, with a processing plant scheduled for 2028. The investment marks a notable shift in the group’s strategy — domestic agro-industry rather than the foreign industrial expansion that produced the Piombino, Brazil and Brandt write-downs. The thesis is straightforward: Algeria spends substantial foreign exchange on sugar imports, and domestic beet processing reduces that bill. In Nigeria, Oba Otudeko’s foundation delivered a 2,400-square-metre administrative complex to Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ogun State, adding to the Honeywell chairman’s growing education legacy.

Globally, VistaJet data published in Knight Frank’s 20th Wealth Report confirmed that Africa-to-Asia was the world’s fastest-growing private jet corridor in 2025, up 42 percent year-on-year. The data point is meaningful for what it implies about African UHNW migration patterns — the same Knight Frank report tracks Italian, UAE and Swiss residency growth as the largest absorbers of outbound African capital. Whether the travel reflects business or relocation, the directional signal is the same: more African origin, more long-haul, more frequent.

Top Stories

Bloomberg ranks Abdul Samad Rabiu as Africa’s 2nd richest man at $19.1 billion, overtaking Rupert, while Forbes still ranks him 4th at $15.3 billion — and here is why both are right The $3.8 billion gap between Bloomberg and Forbes on Rabiu’s wealth comes down to how each tracker counts his Nigerian stock market wealth — and what BUA Cement’s 134 percent year-to-date rally means for investors holding NGX equities.

Femi Otedola executes a surgical turnaround as FirstHoldCo profit rockets 72% in Q1 2026 to $233 million, overtaking GTCO, UBA and Access Holdings Eighteen months after Otedola took the chairmanship of FirstHoldCo, the bank that was widely written off as a tier-one laggard has produced the highest return on equity in the FUGAZ group and the second-largest profit before tax in Nigeria’s tier-one banking sector.

Algerian billionaire Issad Rebrab’s Cevital launches $600 million sugar beet project in Ghardaïa region After three failed foreign industrial bets — Piombino, Brazil and Brandt — Cevital is pivoting decisively to domestic agro-industry, with a processing plant scheduled for 2028 and a thesis built around reducing Algeria’s sugar import bill.

Africa-to-Asia was the world’s fastest-growing private jet corridor in 2025, up 42% — VistaJet data shows VistaJet data published in Knight Frank’s 20th annual Wealth Report puts Africa-to-Asia ahead of every other major international private jet route by growth rate, providing the sharpest available read on the velocity of African UHNW mobility.

Nigerian multimillionaire Oba Otudeko delivers 2,400 sqm building to Olabisi Onabanjo University The Oba Otudeko Foundation has delivered a 2,400-square-metre administrative complex to Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ogun State, the latest addition to the Honeywell chairman’s growing education legacy.

Yesterday’s Insider and Executive Briefings are now available for paying subscribers:

→ Insider Report: Jaswant Rai’s Nzoia Sugar Opacity Problem — What Kenya’s Auditor-General Just Revealed About a 30-Year Lease What the Auditor-General actually said, what the Rai Group’s combined position now looks like across Kenya’s sugar infrastructure, what the Webuye Paper Mills precedent tells us about how long-lease structures of this kind play out, and what the cousins’ Mumias contest signals about the regional Kenya-Uganda sugar dynamic.

→ Executive Briefing: Dangote’s 20,000MW Bet and the $20 Billion Dividend Promise — What the IFC Conversation Tells Us About the IPO’s Real Underwriting Case The 20,000MW power commitment, the $20 billion dividend promise, and the 661,000 bpd commissioning result reframe the Dangote Refinery IPO from a narrow refinery cash flow play into a broader African industrial conglomerate offering.