Isabel dos Santos, the disgraced daughter of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the former president of Angola, might be the only wealthy businessperson from the Southern African nation that you are familiar with. But quite a few Angolans have built multimillion- and billion-dollar empires in industries as diverse as agriculture, food, construction, energy and private equity, and earned nine-figure fortunes along the way.
Meet five ultra-wealthy Angolan entrepreneurs who are individually worth $30 million or more. Each person has founded, owns and runs businesses with proven annual revenues of eight figures or more. Their names don’t ring a bell with the African public, and you’ve probably never heard about them before, but you should probably know them.
Antonio Mosquito
Source of wealth: Conglomerate
Mosquito is usually referred to as an “oligarch” in Angolan business and political circles. He is the owner of Grupo Antonio Mosquito (GAM), one of the largest privately-owned conglomerates in Angola. GAM owns Falcon Oil, a company involved in oil exploration and oil trading. He also owns stakes in Global Media Group, one of Portugal’s largest media groups, and controls the Angolan bank, BAI Micro Financas. Mosquito made his initial fortune in oil trading and auto distribution and served as a distributor for Audi and Volkswagen in Angola for years. He became a business partner (and rumored proxy) for controversial businesswoman Isabel dos Santos and her father.
Agostinho Kapaia
Source of wealth: Conglomerate
Agostinho Kapaia is the founder of Grupo Opaia S.A., one of Angola’s fastest growing conglomerates. Grupo Opaia S.A., which was founded in 2012, has holdings in agriculture, financial services, civil construction services, solar energy technology, drinking water systems and tourism. The $80-million (annual revenue) conglomerate is headquartered in Luanda, but has offices in Lisbon, Sao Paulo, Guangzhou and Miami. In the past few years, Opaia’s construction arm has secured contracts worth more than $150 million from the Angolan government. The group’s agricultural arm controls more than 80,000 hectares of farmland and is presently the largest cereals producer in Angola. Kapaia is a nephew of Antonio Mosquito, who is also one of Angola’s richest men.
Zandre Campos
Source of wealth: Private equity
Zandre Campos is the founder, chairman and CEO of ABO Capital, a private equity firm based in Angola with global assets in healthcare, agriculture, transportation, energy, technology, hospitality, education and real estate. Before he founded ABO Capital, Campos served as the CEO of Nazaki Oil & Gas S.A., an Angolan oil exploration and production company. He also previously served as the CEO of Movicel Telecommunications, a mobile phone company. ABO Capital owns large stakes in ETG, one of Africa’s biggest merchants and processor of agricultural goods, Onna, a San-Franciso-based data integration platform, and Uncharted Power, a power and data infrastructure technology company.
Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais
Source of wealth: Private equity
Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, a Swiss-Angolan entrepreneur, is the founder and CEO of Quantum Global Investment Management, an Africa-focused investment firm with more than $1 billion in assets under management. Quantum Global specializes in private equity investments, asset management, macroeconomic research, and econometric modeling. Quantum Global’s private equity department runs a family of funds focused on direct investments in Africa in the agricultural, healthcare, hospitality, infrastructure, mining, and timber sectors, as well as a sector-agnostic equity fund. Bastos started his career as a consultant with Deloitte in 1989, and later with Abegglen Management Partners. In Luanda, Angola, in 2004, Bastos launched Quantum Capital S.A., the first firm of the Quantum Global Group. In 2008 he founded Banco Kwanza Invest, Angola’s first investment bank.
Joaquim David
Source of wealth: Oil
The 71-year-old businessman is a co-founder of Somoil S.A., the largest private oil exploration and production company in Angola. Somoil presently produces close to 16,000 barrels of oil per day and is the operator of two blocks in the Lower Congo Basin — Offshore Block 2/05 (under a production-sharing agreement) and onshore blocks FS and FST (under a concession contract). Somoil also has a small presence in petroleum distribution in Angola. David started working as an oil engineer with Petrangol and Texaco in the late 1970s. He was named a divisional chief of Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company, in 1982. In 1989, he was promoted to director general of Sonangol, a position that he held until 1998. He founded Somoil S.A. in 2000.
