South Africa officially has the highest number of dollar millionaires in Africa, according to a new report, published by the AfrAsia Bank and New World Wealth, Friday. The report also indicates Johannesburg as home to 23,400 multi-millionaires. Egypt’s Cairo comes second with 10,200, with Nigeria’s Lagos third with 9,100.
The study defines millionaires as people with net assets worth at least $1m, just as it also estimates that there are close to 163,000 multi-millionaires living in Africa, with a combined wealth of $670bn. South Africa has 30% of the total.
The number of millionaires is rising fastest in Ghana’s capital, Accra, the report said, even though at the moment, with 2,300, it does not make the top five.
After Lagos, comes another South African city of Cape Town with 8,900 and Kenya’s Nairobi with 6,200.
It may come as a surprise to many that Johannesburg has more than twice the number of dollar millionaires as Lagos, the economic hub of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its number one economy.
However, Nigeria became Africa’s largest economy only recently, whereas South Africa has been at the helm for as long as I can remember and remains the most industrialised economy in Africa.
South Africa’s current economic problems have not prevented the emergence of new black industrialists.
Economist Owen Nkomo and founder of Inkunzi Investments, said that old money from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange companies, which is largely still in white hands 21 years after the end of apartheid, has been wisely re-invested.
However, he also points to the government’s Black Economic Empowerment scheme, aimed at redressing the imbalances of white minority rule, as a key driver of the growing number of black millionaires.
“I have seen for myself in places like Soweto when the new black bourgeoisie flaunt their wealth on Vilakazi Street, where Nelson Mandela once lived, over the weekend. But I have also seen the vast properties in Cape Town owned by white families. All of this must not delude us, so we forget the plight of the poor majority,” he said.
