Nairobi leads other cities in East Africa with 6,100 millionaires while Kampala is ranked the third in the East African region with 700 millionaires the report says.
Nearly 42 per cent of all dollar millionaires in Africa were living in South Africa’s top four cities in 2015. Johannesburg tops the list with the most millionaires (23 400), while Cape Town (8,900), Durban (2,700) and Pretoria (2,500) are all in the top 10 according to the report.
There are about 163,000 millionaires living in Africa as of June 2015, with combined wealth holdings of $670bn. Cairo in Egypt had the second most millionaires (10,200), while Lagos, Nigeria had the third most (9,100).
Accra in Ghana is set to see the biggest growth in millionaires in the next decade, with numbers forecast to increase from 2,300 in 2015 to 4,100 in 2025, the report shows. Nairobi (71 per cent increase from 6 200 to 10 600) and Durban (48 per cent increase to 4 000) are the next two cities with the highest projected growth.
Colin Grieve, chief representative officer at AfrAsia Bank, said African cities are emerging as epicentres of growth and opportunity. “The are places where growing numbers of consumers with disposable income are congregating,” he said.“Successful entrepreneurs are seizing the opportunity to provide products and services to these expanding markets and in doing so generating wealth for themselves and their communities.”
A twofold increase in the number of wealthy individuals since the turn of the century highlights the problem of deepening inequality as some of the world’s poorest nations register strong economic growth.
The combined wealth holdings of high-net-worth individuals – those with net assets of $1m or more – in Africa totalled $660bn at the end of 2014, according to a report by New World Wealth, South African market research firm.
Meanwhile, the number of poor people in Africa – defined as those living on less than $1.25 a day – increased from 411.3 million in 2010 to 415.8 millon in 2011 World Bank data shows.
By 2024, the number of African millionaires is expected to rise 45 per cent, to approximately 234,000, according to the report.
During the past 14 years the number of high-net-worth individuals in Africa has grown by 145 per cent. The rate for the Middle East over the same period was 136per cent while in Latin America it was 278 per cent.
The global average was 73per cent. The report said that by the end of 2014 the number of people worldwide worth more than $1m had reached 13 million with a combined worth of $66tn although the number of millionaires can vary depending on what assets are included and different methods have produced different figures.
New World Wealth for example, do not include primary residences when assessing wealth or net assets. The World Bank has forecast an average of 5.5 per cent economic growth for sub-Saharan Africa over the next year though it warned that “extreme poverty remains high across the region”.
Nick Dearden, director of the advocacy group Global Justice Now said, the report shows deepening inequality across the continent.
“It’s no wonder that rich individuals in Africa are getting richer, because we’re seeing a form of ‘development’ … which hugely benefits the wealthy but makes the lives of the poor even harder.
Aid money trade agreements and corporate ‘investment’ pushed by Britain are locking countries into a form of growth which is all about making the rich even more rich and the poor even more poor.”
Mauritius has the wealthiest individuals in Africa, with average per-capita wealth of $21,470, according to the report. The rankings show that people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the poorest, at $230 a person.
/Daily News.
No comments :
Post a Comment