Isabel Do Santos is Africa’s first female billionaire
She is the daughter of an African country’s president. She studied in London. She bought assets in Portugal.
And now, according to Forbes, at age 40, she has become Africa’s first woman billionaire.
Isabel dos Santos, the eldest daughter of Angola’s president, has become Africa’s first female billionaire, US financial magazine Forbes has said.
She took engineering at London’s King’s College, before returning to Angola and opening a restaurant called Miami’s Beach.
But she really made her pile with some shrewd investments in Portugal, where she owns a nearly 30 per cent stake in ZON Multimedia, the country’s last cable network.
In addition to that $385 million share, and a seat on the company’s board, Ms Dos Santos owns one-fifth of the publicly traded bank Banco BPI, worth nearly $470 million.
It’s also reported she owns stakes in Unitel, a major mobile phone network in Angola, and Angola’s Banco BIC.
An expert in African affairs at Johns Hopkins University says it’s difficult to explain her accumulation of wealth.
“It’s clear through documented work that the ruling party and the President’s inner circle have a lot of business interests,” he told Forbes.
“The source of funds and corporate governance are very murky.”
“The central problem in Angola is the complete lack of transparency. We can’t trace the provenance of these funds.”
