Meet five ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs from the Republic of the Sudan 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.
Mo Ibrahim
Source of wealth: Telecom
Sudanese-born telecom tycoon Mo Ibrahim is one of the richest Africans in the world. Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim founded Celtel International in 1998, one of the earliest mobile phone companies serving Africa and the Middle East. He sold the company to Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Company for more than $3 billion in 2005.
Osama Daoud Abdellatif
Source of wealth: Diversified
Osama Daoud Abdellatif inherited an engineering and tractor company from his father in the 1960s, and rapidly expanded it into DAL Group, Sudan’s largest conglomerate. DAL Group, which has annual revenues of more than $1.6 billion, has tentacles in food and beverage, agriculture, heavy equipment retail, automobile distribution, education and healthcare. Abdellatif serves as DAL Group’s chairman.
Amin El-Nefeidi
Source of wealth: Diversified
Amin El-Nefeidi is the president of Elnefeidi Group, one of Sudan’s most prominent family-owned conglomerates. Elnefeidi’s beginnings were humble. As a 17-year-old, Amin’s father, Bashir Elnefeidi, opened a tiny store in the local marketplace to sell soap. Bashir Elnefeidi eventually grew the little shop into a larger wholesale outlet with the support of his two brothers, and by the 1970s had diversified into livestock, oil and transportation. The group is most famous for its transportation division, which began operations in 1988 with 15 Fiat trucks, but has since since expanded to 600 trucks and trailers to become the largest inland logistics company in Sudan and one of the largest in Africa. Five decades later, Amin El-Nefeidi, along with his children, now run the business. It has annual revenues of more than $400 million and operates in the agriculture, automotive, commercial, food, logistics, mining, and real estate sectors.
Ahmed Abdellatif
Source of wealth: Diversified
Ahmed Abdellatif is the President of CTC Group, a Sudanese private limited group of companies, established in 1956 as The Central Trading Co. Ltd. CTC Group started off as a trading house for agricultural commodities and general merchandise, and today, still holds its position as one of the country’s largest trading houses. With annual revenues in excess of $200 million, CTC is a major importer, trader and distributor exclusively representing some of the world’s major manufacturers of agricultural and construction machinery, consumer electronics, automobiles and fertilizers in Sudan.
Salih Abdelrahman Yagoub
Source of wealth: Diversified
Salih Abdelrahman Yagoub is the chairman of the eponymous Salih Abdelrahman Yagoub Co. (SAY Co.), which he founded in the 1960s. The company has annual revenues of more than $100 million and operates in numerous fields ranging from industrial construction to trading to retail to services. Like many of Africa’s older generation of wealthy businessmen, Yagoub got his early start in business trading agricultural commodities and general merchandise.