There will be a plethora of new millionaires in Africa over the next ten years, notes the London firm Henley in its latest annual report.
Currently, some 135,200 high net worth individuals (with investable liquid wealth of $1 million or more) live in Africa, along with 342 centimillionaires and 21 billionaires. The majority of these very wealthy people live in the five states of South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco. In these countries reside 56% of the continent’s millionaires and more than 90% of its billionaires. Johannesburg remains the richest city in Africa, with 12,300 millionaires, 25 centimillionaires and 2 billionaires, closely followed by Cape Town with 7,400 millionaires, 28 centimillionaires and 1 billionaire. Next come Cairo (7,200 millionaires), Nairobi (4,400) and Lagos (200).
But the next decade should see other states emerge. Until 2033, Mauritius, Namibia, Zambia, Uganda and Rwanda will see their rate of millionaires increase… by more than 80%. Morocco and Kenya, already in the five states with the most wealth, will also experience the same record increase. Mauritius in particular, in the Indian Ocean, will experience the strongest increase, with more than 95% additional millionaires in 10 years, thanks to “its stable governance and its favorable tax regime”, explains the annual report.
The authors of the report, of which 2024 marks the 9th edition, make another observation: if these African millionaires are more and more numerous, a large part of them are leaving the continent to live in other regions of the world. According to figures from New World Wealth, a South African wealth intelligence firm that co-published the report, “around 18,700 wealthy individuals have left Africa over the last decade.” Most of these very rich Africans settled in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. A significant number of people have also moved to France, Switzerland, Monaco, Portugal, Canada, New Zealand and Israel, New World Wealth further specifies.
“There are currently 54 billionaires born in Africa in the world, one of the richest in the world is Elon Musk, but only 21 of them still live on the continent,” notes Andrew Amoils, research director at the South African cabinet.
The curve of wealthy personalities thus matches that of the demographic boom predicted for Africa in the years to come. With a record average of more than 4 children per woman, Africa is expected to see its child population increase by 170 million by 2030, bringing the number of under-18s on the continent to 750 million, according to forecasts from the Unicef.
This curve also matches economic growth expected to be the fastest in the world after Asia in the next decade, projected at 4% by the IMF for sub-Saharan Africa. Commenting on these optimistic forecasts for the continent, a famous South African political columnist, Judge Malala, sees this economic boom as a geopolitical shift. “With the emergence of a new world political order, African voices are being raised (…) in international decision-making bodies. As Russia, China, the US and the EU fight for favor on the continent, African leaders have become bolder and demand a seat at the top tables,” he notes. African leaders will thus forge “closer relations (with) other ‘middle powers’ such as India, Turkey, Argentina and Saudi Arabia”.