Angolan businesswoman who’s the eldest child of the Angola’s former president Isabel dos Santos is the richest woman in African continent. She was born in 1973 having a Russian mother. The former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, ruled the country from 1979 to 2017. That’s the moment many believe the eldest daughter made her billions.
According to Forbes, her net worth is US$2 billion which is equivalent to over ksh.200 billion. This makes her the most successful woman on African land. It’s said that the lady acquired wealth through companies that were doing business with Angolan government. The close connections and power from the family were the key factors for her enormous wealth. The BBC named her among the 100 most influential women in the world.
The lady who remains in exile in Portugal is currently being followed up by Angolan Government since 2018, trying to prosecute her for the past corruption crimes that may have led to Angola’s ongoing recession crisis.
In the past 20 years dos Santos has held management positions in a number of companies listed on European stock exchanges. Dos Santos returned from London in the early 1990s to join her father in Luanda and started working as a project manager engineer for Urbana 2000, a subsidiary of Jembas Group, that had won a contract to clean and disinfect the city. Following that, she set up a trucking business. The widespread use of walkie-talkie technology paved the way for her subsequent foray into telecoms. In 1997, she started her first business, opening the Miami Beach Club, one of the first night clubs and beach restaurants on the Luanda Island.
Over nearly 20 years she expanded her business interests, leading to the creation of several holdings, in Angola and mostly abroad, making substantial investments in high-profile enterprises, especially in Portugal.In June 2016, she was appointed by her father as chairwoman of Sonangol, the Angolan state oil company. The controversial appointment in the wake of similar appointments of children of the president to key posts was short-lived, as João Lourenço, the new Angolan President, fired her merely two months after being sworn into office.
