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BILLIONAIRE: Isobel Dos Santos

THE 2013 Forbes billionaire list has been released featuring 1,426 of the world’s richest people, all of whom have fortunes as a result of their investments in industrial, technological and commercial businesses ventures across the globe.

Here is a list of five Black billionaires that feature on this year's Forbes list:

Aliko Dangote

Aliko Dangote is Nigeria’s richest man for a third year in a row, ranking 43 on the 2013 Forbes world billionaire list. Dangote, 55, who was previously ranked in the 76th position in 2012, earned his $16.1bn fortune from his industrial involvement in cement, sugar and flour.

He started building his fortune just over three decades ago when he received a loan from his maternal uncle, which allowed him to begin trading commodities such as cement, sugar and flour. Since then he has gone on to build the Dangote Group, West Africa’s largest publicly-listed conglomerate, owning sugar refineries, salt processing facilities and Dangote Cement, the continent’s largest cement producer.

Danogote officially tops the chart as the richest man in Africa.

Mike Adenuga

Mike Adenuga is currently ranked as the 267th richest man in the world, in addition to receiving the title of the second richest man in Nigeria, following Aliko Dangote. Adenuga, who recently gave the Nigerian football team $1m for winning the 2013 African Cup of Nations, gained his wealth from mobile telecom and oil.

His telecom company Globalcom is Nigeria’s second largest mobile phone network that provides 24 million Nigerians with mobile coverage, operating in the Republic of Benin, It is scheduled to start its commission in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

His oil company Conoil Producing is one of Nigeria's largest independent exploration companies; it produces an average of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

Patrice Motsepe

Ranking 490th on the Forbes billionaire list is Patrice Motsepe. Aged 51, Motsepe is South Africa’s first and only black billionaire with a fortune of $2.9bn.

His mining conglomerate, African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) has interests in platinum, nickel, chrome, iron, manganese, coal, copper and gold. Yet as a result of the financial turmoil sweeping the mining industry in South Africa, ARM has suffered considerably facing labour disputes, violence and subsequent production losses.

Motespe, who originally trained as a lawyer, became the first black partner at the Bowman Gilfillan law firm in Johannesburg. He managed to make most of his mining fortune through the government's black economic empowerment policy, which mandates that mining companies be at least 26 per cent black-owned.

Earlier this year, he was inspired by the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to donate to charity, where he gave millions to help improve the lives of poor people.

Oprah Winfrey

Television personality and entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey ranks 503rd in the Forbes world billionaire list. At aged 59, Winfrey is the 11th most powerful woman in the world with a $2.8bn fortune.
Although the Oprah Winfrey Show ended in 2011 after 25 seasons, the show is still famous for being the highest rated talk show in American television history.

Winfrey still manages to stay in the headlines after reviving her cable channel OWN, formally known as the Oprah Winfrey Network, which has featured the likes of Lance Armstrong, Katy Perry and Beyonce in addition to being broadcasted to 83 million homes.

She continues to support educational causes and has spent $100m on the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.

Isabel Dos Santos

Angolan investor Isabel dos Santos has been named the 490th richest person in the Forbes list, highlighting her as the richest women in African and the most powerful and richest women in Angola.
Santos who is said to have a minimum fortune of $2 billion gained her fortune from her involvement in financial investments. At the age of 24, shoe opened her first restaurant in Miami Beach in Luanda, the Angolan capital.

Santos is rumoured to have received much of her wealth from her father, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the long reigning Angolan President, as a result of him transferring his shares over to her.

Her most valuable asset - worth a conservative $1bn - is a 25 per cent stake in Unitel, one of Angola's two mobile phone networks, where Dos Santos is a board member. She also sits on the board of Angola's Banco BIC, where she also has a 25 per cent stake.