The Cement Multi-billionaires: Dangote and A.S Rabiu Top Forbes Rich List
The secret to wealth in Nigeria? Two words: Cement production
The Forbes 2023 list of richest people in the world is out, and Nigeria’s two largest cement manufacturers, Aliko Dangote and Abdul-Samad Rabiu, have been listed as the richest men in the country. Can this be a coincidence that both billionaires are in the same industry, or is this an indication of the importance of the real estate sector to modern wealth creation?
Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, unsurprisingly kept the top spot on the African and Nigerian rich list, coming in 134th place in the world rankings with a total net worth of about $13.6 billion.
The 65-year-old, through a holding company, owns 85 % of public stock in Dangote Cement, which readers might recall recorded a 13 percent increase in revenue last month. Market experts have attributed his more recent successes to the Group’s re-acquisition of outstanding shares from the public.
Within the first few weeks of this year alone, Dangote Cement’s price valuation has risen by as much as 3.53 percent, up from N261 per unit when the year began to N270 at the time of writing. In fact, the company, which was valued at N4.9 trillion as of the last count, constitutes roughly half of the billionaires’ wealth.
The recent rankings, however, mark the first time in 4 years that the billionaire has dropped from the world 100 list.
Meanwhile, for the CEO of BUA Group, Abdul-Samad Rabiu, it’s been a lot more dramatic rise altogether. Just five years ago, the Kano-based businessman was in 3rd position in the country behind Mike Adenuga. His net wealth was evaluated at $1.18 billion to Adenuga’s estimated $6.4 billion. Beginning with a series of mergers, however, he experienced an exponential increase in wealth. First was the merger of Kalambaina Cement into the Cement Company of Northern Nigeria (CCNN) in Nov 2018, which boosted his net worth by about $650 million. He subsequently followed that up with the merger of CCNN and OBU Cement into publicly-traded BUA Cement in January 2020. This increased his net worth by another $1.5 billion. Currently, the Forbes World Richest Ranking assesses his wealth as $7.4 billion.
Fiscally shrewd moves like these saw the company experience almost untrammeled growth, as evinced by the strong yearly returns posted for two consecutive years. In the first three quarters of 2022, BUA Cement reported a turnover of $168 million in profit. This represented a 12.3 percent increase up from $145 million in the same timeframe in 2021.
These bountiful returns have, in turn, allowed Samad Rabiu to diversify his investment portfolio to include mining, oil and gas, and agribusiness.
However, it is the food sector, in particular, that seems to be bearing early fruits.
After listing BUA Foods on the public market on the 5 of January 2022, Samad Rabiu’s net worth jumped from $4.9 to $7 billion in just 48 hours. BUA Foods also posted a growth rate of 17 percent in the first three quarters of 2022.
What is intriguing to market watchers is that the growth in the fortunes of these billionaires is despite the continuing depreciation of the Naira. Making a Naira fortune is one thing, increasing or maintaining a million-dollar fortune in the current situation is astounding.