Black Billionaires

This is a global list of Black African ancestry billionaires in U.S. dollars. There are currently 15 known black billionaires (2021/08), representing 8 countries.

1. 🇺🇲 USA (7)
2. 🇳🇬 Nigeria (3)
3. 🇿🇦 South Africa (1)
4. 🇯🇲 🇨🇦 Jamaica/Canada (1)
5. 🇧🇧 Barbados (1) 
6. 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe (1)
7. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 United Kingdom (1)

The 15 current billionaires on our list has aggregate wealth of ~ $50 billion, and a median age of 59 years. Nigeria's Alhaji Aliko Dangote accounts for 27.8% of that aggregate wealth. Black billionaires aggregate wealth represent less than one percent of the aggregate wealth of all billionaires.

Nigerian business magnate Alhaji Aliko Dangote with a net worth of $12.5 billion (2021/08), is currently the world's richest Black person, according to Forbes magazine.

This year, 2021, marks 20 years since Robert L. Johnson and Michael Lee-Chin became the first Black people to be listed on Forbes magazines annual ranking of the World's Billionaires in 2001. Forbes mistakenly listed Mr. Johnson as the only Black billionaire not recognizing Mr. Lee-Chin as having Black ancestry.

Oprah Winfrey became the worlds first Black female billionaire in 2003 and remained the only female Black billionaire until 2013, when she was joined by Isabel dos Santos, Africa's first female billionaire and Folorunsho Alakija, Nigeria's first female billionaire.

In 2014, Michael Jordan became the first billionaire athlete. He was the forth-richest Black American, behind Robert F. Smith, David L. Steward and Oprah Winfrey.

2014 is also the year our list of 10 Black billionaires had peak aggregate wealth of $60.9 billion.

In June 2019, Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter was named the first hip hop artist to become a billionaire by Forbes.com.

On August 4, 2021, Rihanna was listed by Forbes magazine as officially becoming a billionaire. Ms. Fenty is the first Black billionaire borned and raised in Barbados. She's also the youngest known Black billionaire to date.

Black billionaires make up less than 1% of all billionaires worldwide. Collectively their wealth represents only 26% of Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos net worth of $191 billion.

Updated 2021-08-23.

_{Compiled using data from Forbes.com, Bloomberg.com and CanadianBusiness.com.}