World’s biggest wealth manager, UBS,  is targeting millionaire clients in oil-rich Nigeria and Angola as Swiss rival Credit Suisse Group withdraws from some African markets, Venture Africa quoted a report by financial services group, Imara.

the number of wealthy people in the world’s poorest continent has increased over the last decade as Africa’s richest people pursue a variety of growing business opportunities including financial services, mining, construction, energy and retail.

According to the Imara report, UBS is vying with Swiss banks from Julius Baer Group to Pictet & Cie. for emerging market millionaires as a global crackdown on tax evasion forces European and American clients to withdraw funds.

“The amount of people on the continent that fall within our wealth- management bracket is increasing every day and there are still tons of opportunities relatively untapped,” said Sean Bennett, the managing director of UBS in sub-Saharan Africa.

While Bennett sees potential to woo super-rich customers in Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Botswana, Credit Suisse is planning to withdraw from 83 markets, including Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to cut costs.

UBS Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti is prioritizing boosting profit at the Zurich-based bank’s wealth-management unit as he cuts 10,000 jobs and shrinks the investment bank by exiting most debt trading.

UBS, which tops Scorpio’s 2012 ranking of wealth managers with double the $855 million of assets of fifth-placed Credit Suisse, wants that business to contribute half of pretax profit by 2015. Africa, where Nigeria’s Alhaji Aliko Dangote ranks 35th on a global rich list, may provide part of the answer.

The number of Africans with at least $1 million of investable assets climbed 9.9 percent to 140,000 in 2012, according to a report published on 18 June by Cap Gemini SA and Royal Bank of Canada.

“That was the fastest rate of increase outside North America as the economies of countries such as Nigeria and Ghana grew at more than 5 percent in 2012,” Imara said in the report.

Early last month, Ventures Africa reported that the combined fortune of Africa’s 55 billionaires amounts to $143.88 billion. With average net worth of the members of this exclusive club pegged at $2.6 billion.

The millionaires’ boom however, offers little consolation to Africans at the bottom of the heap, the report declares.