Africa’s Richest Women Failed To Make Forbes 2021 Billionaires List

For years, two African business magnets, Nigeria’s Folorunsho Alakija, the Vice Chair of Famfa Oil and the eldest child of Angola’s former President, Isabela dos Santos, have featured on the Forbes billionaires list. But there seems to be a decline in their fortune in 2020.

The development comes despite Forbes figures showing a record setting year for world billionaires who added an additional $15trn and unprecedented number of new entrants.

This is based on the 35th annual billionaires list released by the United States based wealth rating magazine.

Over the past few years, the duo have featured on the list and as the most influential women across the globe.

Isabel dos Santos, has since 2013 occupied the top spot as the richest woman in the continent. However, she was knocked out by a series of court decisions freezing her assets in both Angola and Portugal.

In 2013, Forbes estimated her wealth at $3.5bn, but Angolan court claims she accumulated the riches through embezzlement and money laundering.

Forbes said, it “assumes she has no access and likely little chance to gain back control of the frozen assets- together worth about $1.6bn if not frozen—so we give her no value for them and by our calculations she is no longer a billionaire.”

The 48- year old Angolan who was worth an estimated $2.2bn in January 2020 was consequently dropped.

In the 2021 list, 493 new billionaires emerged, but for Alakija, the oil price crash affected her fortune.

In 2020, demand for oil dropped leading to prices selling less than $20 dollar a barrel.

“Forbes calculates that the fortune of Folorunsho Alakija of Nigeria, who owns an oil exploration company, dropped below $1bn due to lower oil prices,” The business magazine said in a separate document seen by THE WHISTLER.

The 70- year old Nigerian billionaire who secured an oil prospecting license in 1993, which was later converted to an oil mining lease saw her wealth shrink due to the impact of Covid-19 on oil prices.

The billionaire’s major source of wealth is from her Famfa Oil business with partners and her partners include Chevron and Petrobras.