A total of 291 Kenyans has a net worth of over 3 billion shillings making the country one of the world’s top four where the super-rich population is growing fast, shows the World Ultra Wealth Report 2018.
The basis for the classification of the wealthy individuals is based on asset possession, their altruistic efforts, the source of wealth as well as the industry focus. In the 2017 report, regional trends, the market drivers, wealth distribution and political influence was factored in.
According to the report, the world’s ultra-high net worth (UHNW) by 2017 was represented by 255,810 persons, a 12.9 percent increase from 2016 where it stood at 3.6 percent.
Africa, according to Wealth X Africa has 2,490 of the UHNW individuals, and Forbes ranked Kenya the fourth with 11.7 percent of the continent’s population, which is why 291 individuals had a net worth of more than 3 billion shillings in 2017.
The economic environment in Africa had significant improvement as global commodity markets and the consumer’s purchasing power boldened, factors which aided the wealth growth during the period under review. Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia, for instance, were identified by the report as having significant consumer growth.
Notably, the 2018 report claims that the domestic equity markets performed strongly. However, the performance was partially offset by several factors including currency depreciation against the US dollar, the destabilizing backdrop of weak institutions, ongoing policy management issues, high indebtedness, and declining foreign aid.
The wealth of all the world’s individuals combined increased 16.3 percent to hit 31.5 trillion US dollars. Sadly, Africa represents only a percentage of the super-rich population across the world compared to North America, which has the highest population that accounts for 35 percent with 90,440 super-rich persons.
Europe followed North America with 72,570 individuals accounting for 28 percent of the wealth, then Asia at 27 percent with 68,970 individuals, the Middle East at 4 percent with 9,090 super-rich, followed by Latin America representing 3 percent of the total population with 8,550 individuals and the Pacific with 1 percent and 3,700 individuals.
Africa’s 2,490 individuals had a combined wealth net worth of 305 billion US dollars.
The fastest growing ultra-rich populations according to the report is Bangladesh with 17.3 percent followed by China with 13.4 percent of Asia’s wealthy populations. Vietnam, on the other hand, was placed in the third position with 12.7 percent of Asia’s ultra-rich population.
India, as Forbes states, is the 5th and it accounts for 10.3 percent of the wealth. The others were Hong Kong with 9.3 percent, Ireland with 9.1 percent, Israel at 8.6 percent and Pakistan with 8.4 percent.
The United States came at the 10th position with 8.1 percent of North America’s ultra-healthy persons.