We in South Africa have long comforted ourselves with the assumption that, whatever the continent’s turbulence, our economy is Africa’s biggest, anchored by deep capital markets, globally integrated corporations and a currency that still carries weight in regional trade and finance.

Yet, even within this established hierarchy, the very top end of private wealth is beginning to show signs of movement, with Nigerian Abdulsamad Rabiu having overtaken Johann Rupert – a son of the South African soil – to become the continent’s second-richest individual, behind his compatriot Aliko Dangote.

According to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index – released this month – Rabiu’s fortune has surged to $19-billion, while Rupert’s has slipped to $17.7-billion. Dangote’s net worth stands at $35-billion, making him the sixty-fifth-richest person and placing him among the most powerful business figures on Earth.

This is not simply about a Nigerian tycoon surpassing a South African luxury goods magnate, but rather about the rising prominence of Nigerian industrial capital asserting growing power in sectors tied directly to production, infrastructure and mass consumption.

Rabiu’s empire is rooted in cement, sugar, flour, food processing and construction materials through companies including BUA Cement, one of Africa’s largest cement manufacturers, and BUA Foods, whose activities include sugar refining, flour milling, pasta production and rice processing.

Bloomberg’s latest figures show Rabiu’s wealth rising sharply alongside stronger valuations in his industrial companies, while BUA Foods reported a 14% increase in after-tax profit for the first quarter of 2026.

Like Dangote, Rabiu represents a new generation of African industrialists whose fortunes are tied not primarily to financial engineering or inherited wealth but to large-scale manufacturing. As an example, BUA Cement boasts a nameplate capacity of about 11-million tons a year, with plans to raise this to 20-million, while rice production capacity at BUA Foods exceeds 200 000 t/y.

Large-scale manufacturing in Africa is highly welcome for a continent long trapped in cycles of commodity dependence and import addiction.

Meanwhile, Rupert’s fortune remains strongly connected to Richemont, the global group behind brands such as Cartier and Montblanc, famous for luxury jewellery, watches, handbags and other leather goods, fragrances and accessories.

There is nothing illegitimate about luxury capitalism, but the contrast with Rabiu’s businesses is revealing. While one model extracts value from elite global consumption, the other is tied to what ordinary Africans consume daily – cement and industrial inputs for infrastructure development and industrial processes, and food that helps ensure no one – even among the poorest of the poor – goes to bed hungry.

Although the mining-finance complex, telecoms and luxury goods remain important, billionaire fortunes are increasingly emerging from factories and processing plants. In Bloomberg’s latest ranking, four of the top ten in Africa – Dangote, Rabiu, Egypt’s Nassef Sawiris and Algeria’s Issad Rebrab – are industrial billionaires.

Only two, South African Patrice Motsepe and compatriot Nicky Oppenheimer, made their fortunes from mining, the most traditional wealth base, which is highly dependent on commodity cycles. One each is active in luxury goods retail and manufacturing, and telecoms and energy, namely Rupert and Nigeria’s Mike Adenuga.

Against this backdrop, I’m tempted to predict that the next generation of African billionaires will come from industrial manufacturing because it is the only sector that combines scale, protected demand and high barriers to entry in a way that often produces multibillion-dollar firms.

Indeed, the World Bank and other institutions consistently show that industrialisation is central to structural transformation, with Africa still heavily dependent on imported manufactured goods and therefore positioned for import-substitution-driven expansion in sectors such as cement, fertiliser and food processing.

Given that industrial manufacturing accounts for a significant share of Africa’s billionaire wealth, if our governments are serious about capturing this potential, they must deliberately build the enabling conditions: reliable energy, efficient logistics, stable industrial policy and credible trade frameworks.

It is only under such conditions that manufacturing shifts from a constrained sector into the most plausible engine of large-scale wealth creation.

The broader lesson is simple yet uncomfortable: if Africa’s next wave of wealth is being built in factories, then the next question is not about rankings or billionaires but about whether the factories are being built quickly enough to change ordinary people’s everyday economic life.

The question of pace is critical, given Africa’s current reality, characterised by the entry of millions of young people into the job market in a context where factory and logistics capacity, as well as energy supply, are not expanding at a commensurate rate.