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BOOK REVIEW: What makes billionaires tick

Africa’s Billionaires - Inspirational stories from the continent's wealthiest people, by Chris Bishop

CHRIS Bishop is the founding editor of Forbes Africa, a monthly business magazine. It features original articles on finance, industry, investing, marketing and related topics. It comes out of the prestigious Forbes stable, known also for its lists of extraordinarily rich people.

The Forbes lists are the output of the diligent and painstaking work of the magazine’s wealth unit in the US. They function as the auditors in the process of fact-checking, and verify the work of the magazine’s researchers. “The US crew are a bit like tax people – if they doubt a fact, they will not allow it. They always err on the side of caution,” Bishop explains.

In this very readable book, Bishop introduces the reader to 17 African billionaires, though there are more that Forbes recognises, and many unknown billionaires in Africa as well. Among these are the billionaires who deliberately hide their wealth, or whose wealth is not in the public domain. 

This book will obviously be enjoyed by those with a curiosity about people who have achieved enormous success in business. One could be curious about many things in this context, but my focus in reading the book was trying to identify what makes these exceptional business people exceptional.

There are no common threads in the conventional sense – for example, ‘all are children of parents with entrepreneurial experience’, or ‘all had experience of wealth’, or for that matter ‘all grew up in poverty’. While many entrepreneurs do cite these conditions as stimuli for their business lives, they do not add to our understanding of why a very few become billionaires.

What is the unique characteristic of a billionaire?

So, excluding the characteristics that would be common to a successful business leader, of any type, in any context, what may one conclude is the unique characteristic of a billionaire? Do they put in longer hours, are they more brilliant, more business-savvy or greater risk takers than business people who merely become millionaires? Are they luckier, are they better leaders?

I have read about, met, and know enough hugely successful people in disciplines as varied as academics, medicine, business and public service, not to have drawn the conclusions that follow. The best put in longer hours, are more brilliant than their colleagues, are savvier, are more likely to take greater risks and innovate more. All appear to have maximised the value of the luck or serendipity they have experienced.

From Bishop’s book, one gets a clear indication of the difference between billionaires and others – they think on a vastly different scale. Where others think of building a successful factory, Aliko Dangote (cement), Narendra Raval (steel), for example, think of building successful factories across the country, continent or the world. So too do Strive Masiyiwa (telecoms), and Adrian Gore (health insurance) in their fields.

Yes, there are billionaires whose world view was stretched by what they saw in their parents’ homes, as was the case with Tanzanian Mohammed Dewji whose father, Gulam Dewji, had amassed a fortune worth $560m. But even in Mohammed Dewji’s early 20s, a dean at Georgetown University where he studied recalls him thinking about addressing the economic problems of his country.

From nothing to billionaire property mogul

Sudhir Ruparilia, one of Uganda’s few dollar billionaires and a man who is among the top 30 richest people on the continent, started off with nothing. He did not even have the benefit of a single successful family member to guide him.

An Asian refugee from Idi Amin’s terror, he started work earning $30 a week in a market in Golders Green in London. Today, he is a billionaire property mogul, not a millionaire property owner.

One could speculate that some billionaires may well have had the scale at which they think influenced or bolstered by the company they keep. Stephen Saad of Aspen had as early investors, property financier Jonathan Beare and Stephen Koseff (CE of Investec).

Saad, a former auditor, was a millionaire at 29 and a billionaire at 50. He took his pharmaceutical business from a small success to a multinational phenomenon with a market capitalisation of about R130bn.

The inspiration you will get from the remarkable men and a woman (Wendy Applebaum) is worth the read. Yes, they are tenacious, many are described as modest and quiet, but to my mind that type of inspiration can be gleaned from those whom Forbes would not put on the cover of their magazine – they are just not rich enough!

The inspirational takeaway from ‘Africa’s Billionaires’ is the expanse of their vision. Their expanse might well raise your own a few notches, just as watching Roger Federer or Serena Williams at play might inspire you to up your tennis game.

Readability: Light +--- Serious
Insights:      High --+-- Low
Practical:      High ----+ Low

* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Executive Update. Views expressed are his own.

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