Not all countries or billionaires had good years. Turkey, for instance, lost 19 billionaires thanks to soaring inflation, currency decline and a tanking stock market, Forbes reports. By comparison, the African continent gained nine new billionaires in 2014, which was a record.
Women across the globe are rocking the Forbes list this year with a record total of 42 new women making their debut. There are now 172 women on the list, up from 138 last year. This includes the two African women featured in the next slide.
The African continent had 29 billionaires on this year’s list, including two women: Isabel Dos Santos and Folorunsho Alakija. Worth $3.7 billion, Dos Santos of Angola is Africa’s sixth-richest person. Alakija, who built her fortune on oil and is Nigeria’s first female billionaire, is worth a billion and change less, but at $2.5 billion net worth she merits a No. 14 out of 29 on the Forbes African billionaires list.
According to Forbes, which does the annual rankings, around two thirds of the 2014 billionaires are self-made men and women. This includes Bill Gates, who was No. 1 on the list this year again. Although Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu has held the title of world’s richest person for the last four years, Gates was No. 1 on the list for 15 out of the last 20 years. Forbes has been publishing the billionaires list since 1987. Back then the world had just 140 billionaires.
For the first time an African, Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, made it onto the list of the top 25 richest people in the world. Worth $25 billion, Dangote moved up 20 spots from 2013. And for the first time ever, billionaires from Tanzania, Uganda and Algeria also joined the planet’s most exclusive club.
South Africa has eight billionaires on the Forbes list, but only one is black. Patrice Motsepe, worth $2.7 billion, is the first and only black billionaire in the country. He made his fortune founding the publicly traded African Rainbow Minerals, which has interests in precious and semi-precious metals plus coal and manganese.
There were 492 Americans on the Forbes list this year, thanks to a strong stock market and the tech boom, making the U.S. the most billionaire-heavy country int he world. China came in second with 152 billionaires and Russia was third with 111. In 1987, when the list began there were only 140 billionaires in the world, and 44 were American. The proportion of American billionaires has stayed roughly the same, however: around 33 percent today versus 32 percent in the late 1980s.
African billionaire Johann Rupert, worth $7.6 billion according to Forbes, is also a car aficionado. He has a personal collection of more than 200 antique vehicles displayed in the Franschhoek Motor Museum, which he owns.
Notable newcomers to this year’s Forbes list include fashion designer Michael Kors, World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon and Denise Coates, owner of U.K. online betting firm Bet365.
Forbes global wealth team reports the net worth of all 1,645 of the world’s billionaires totals $6.4 trillion — a full trillion dollars more than last year’s number.
