Forbes, on Tuesday released its list of the world’s richest persons with Alhaji Aliko Dangote, chairman of Dangote Cement, Dangote Sugar Refinery, Dangote Flour Mills and NASCON (Dangote Salt), among others listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), retaining his position as Africa’s richest man with a net worth of $14.1bn.
Dangote’s worth as of March 6, 2018 was placed him number 100 globally, even as it was lower than his $16.7bn in 2015, which was down $5bn from prior year, resulting from the drop in the share price of Dangote Cement, the biggest company by market capitalization on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), in addition to the weakening of Nigeria’s Naira.
Dangote, who shared the 100^th spot with Harold Hamn, 72 year-old American, and oil and gas magnate, has seen his worth growing steadily from a modest $2.5bn in March 20109.
Dangote was followed at a distant 228th position by Johann Rupert, 67 and chairman of Swiss luxury goods firm- Compagnie Financiere Richemont, a luxury goods firm from South Africa, with a family worth of $7bn.
Otunba Mike Adenuga, 64, owner of Nigerian telecommunications giant- GlobaCom, as well as Conoil, a petroleum products marketing giant ranked 365^th with a net worth of $5.3bn.
Meanwhile, Forbes in its 2018 ranking noted the widening gap between the really rich and the merely rich as fortunes soar to new heights, with a record 2,208 billionaires making it to Forbes’ 32 annual ranking of the world’s billionaires pooling a record $9.1tr cumulative worth, which was up 18% from a year ago. Last year there were 2,043 billionairs.
A further breakdown showed that the world’s 20 richest people representing less than 1% of total billionaires, are worth a staggering $1.2tr, even as their riches amount to 13% of the total fortune of all billionaires worldwide.
Jeff Bezos emerged the richest person on the planet and the first to be described as a centi-billionaire atop our annual ranking after shares of his e-commerce giant Amazon jumped 59% in 12 months, boosting his fortune by $39.2bn.
This helped him overtake Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, who ceded the top spot for only the sixth time since 1995; while France’s Bernard Arnault had the second best year after Bezos after his luxury goods empire LVMH soared by $30.5bn, making him the richest European for the first time since 2012 and number four richest in the world.
Ma Huateng and Jack Ma, two tech entrepreneurs from mainland China climbed into the top 20 for the first time, with Huateng (also known as Pony Ma), emerging Asia’s wealthiest person, ranking number 17 in the world, helped by his firm Tencent’s WeChat, a ubiquitous social-messaging app with nearly 1 billion active users. Jack Ma, chief of another e-commerce giant Alibaba, placed 20th as its shares increased 76% in a year.
There were also 259 newcomers who made their fortunes in everything from tech and aerospace to private aviation and wedding dresses. China has the most new faces with 89, while the U.S. is next with 18. That is helping close the gap between the two nations. Altogether the U.S. has more billionaires than any country in the world with 585, while greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) has 476.
“On this year’s list, the billionaires hail from 72 countries and territories, including the first ever from Hungary and Zimbabwe.
One country not represented: Saudi Arabia. Forbes chose to leave off all 10 Saudis given reports of asset seizures after the Saudi Crown Prince detained some 200 people, including some billionaires, some for as long as three months.
While the vast majority of the world’s billionaires added to their fortunes in the past 12 months, 16% had fortunes that slipped. One notable loser was President Donald Trump, whose fortune fell $400 million since March 2017 to a current $3.1 billion. He is now ranked 766 in the world, down from 544.