Aliko Dangote slides from $25B to $7B as Jeff Bezos gains $24B amid pandemic

Founder and chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote is watching his wealth decline steadily, on a daily basis, as Coronavirus pandemic holds the world on lockdown.

Dangote first became richest African in 2011, with a net worth of $13.8 billion, a major increase from $2.1 billion the previous year.

In March 2013, his worth had risen to $16.1 billion, and by June 2013 Dangote went down in history as the first African entrepreneur to hit a personal net worth of $20 billion.

In February 2014, Aliko Dangote’s worth hit the highest ever at $25 billion. Then the decline started.

In February 2015, his net worth dropped to about $22 billion. In January 2016, Forbes reported that Dangote’s worth had dropped by $3 billion dollars between December 31, 2014 and December 31, 2015, placing his worth at $17 billion. Two months later, it dropped further to $14.4 billion.

By end of December 2016, Forbes reported that based on the stock prices and exchange rates at the time, Dangote was only worth $12.4 billion, making him one of the biggest billionaire losers for the year.

In January 2018, Dangote’s net worth was $12.2 billion, about $100 million dollars up from the previous year. At this time, he had started moving away from cement gradually and had made investments into fertiliser production as well as the oil refinery which is soon to start operations.

In March 2019, Dangote was worth $10.8 billion, after pocketing $650 million dividends from Dangote Cement Plc. In February 2020, Forbes estimate and ranking showed that Dangote’s net worth had dropped by another $200 million from $10.3bn in the previous year to $10.1bn.

On 11th of April 2020, Forbes again announced that the billionaire’s worth had dropped to $7.4 billion, even though he was worth $8.3B only four days earlier. (Dangote currently worth $8 billion, as at April 16, 2020). He is currently number 162 on Forbes list of billionaires around the world, and number 1 in Africa.

Meanwhile, the world’s richest person is getting richer, even amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, and perhaps because of it.

With consumers stuck at home, they’re relying on Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. more than ever before. The retailer’s stock climbed 5.3% to a record Tuesday, lifting the founder’s net worth to $138.5 billion.

The pandemic has brought the global economy to a near standstill and pushed almost 17 million Americans onto the unemployment rolls in the span of three weeks. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. signaled Tuesday that loan losses fueled by the unprecedented job cuts — many of them in the retail sector that Amazon so efficiently disrupted — could rival those incurred after the 2008 financial crisis.

Yet Bezos and many of his wealthy peers have seen their fortunes recover in recent weeks, helped by the boost given to markets by unprecedented stimulus efforts by governments and central bankers.

While the combined net worth of the world’s 500 richest people has dropped $553 billion this year, it has surged 20% from its low on March 23, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

There have been massive losers among the moneyed set. Many in the oil and gas industry have been hammered by the collapse in crude prices including wildcatter Harold Hamm, whose fortune is down 64% to $3.7 billion.

But there also have been remarkable gains. Leading this group is Bezos, who has added almost $24 billion to his fortune in 2020, as well as MacKenzie Bezos, who was left with a 4% stake in Amazon as part of the couple’s recent divorce settlement. Her net worth has climbed $8.2 billion to $45.3 billion, and she’s now No. 18 on the Bloomberg wealth ranking, ahead of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest person, and Mexico’s Carlos Slim.