The latest list of young millionaires in Africa is dominated by tech enterpreneurs from South Africa and Nigeria. They include Mark Shuttleworth (39), Vinny Lingham (34) and Nic Haralambous (29), all South Africans, and Nigerians Sim Shagaya (38), Abasiama Idaresit (34) and Jason Chukwuma Njoku (32).
Valued at over $500 million, Shuttleworth is the richest founded Canonical Limited, a company that market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects.
Another South African on the list is Lingham who co-founded Gyft. Gyft is a mobile gift card company that is backed by Google Ventures. He was also previously the founder and CEO of Yola, Inc. (formerly known as SynthaSite), a San Francisco-based Web 2.0 start-up that provides free website building, publishing and hosting services.
He is also the co-founder of SiliconCape.com, an NGO based in South Africa that aims to turn Cape Town into a technology hub. Lingham was previously the founder and CEO of the global search marketing firm incuBeta and its subsidiary Clicks2Customers. He serves Linghman serves on the boards of ChessCube, SkyRove, and Personera and previously served on marketing advisory boards for Nasdaq-listed companies ValueClick and Yahoo.
Nigeria is represented by the duo of Konga’s Sim Shagaya and Jason Njoku of iROKO Partners.
A breakdown of the list also revealed most of the entrepreneurs are involved in technology innovation, property, and mining exploration as well as brokering of lucrative government contracts. Other young African millionaires are from Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
