/ world today news/ Isabel dos Santos is only 40, but she is already a billionaire – the first billionaire in Africa. Isabelle’s father is the president of Angola – the country in which some have amassed untold fortunes thanks to oil, writes “Deutsche Welle“.
At her wedding to Congolese millionaire Sindika Dokolo, a choir from Belgium sang. Food for the 10,000 guests was delivered by charter flights from France. The price of pleasure – three million euros. The godfather of the president’s daughter was none other than the Angolan minister of oil – a key figure, given that black gold provides 90 percent of government revenue.
She doesn’t want posts, she wants an empire
The lavish celebration is still talked about today – nine years later. At the same time, the ostentatious extravagance is not at all typical of the investor Isabel dos Santos – she follows the course of her father Jose, who is known to be very attached to the good reputation of Angola.
Isabel dos Santos used family connections not for a ministerial career but for building an economic empire. This applies in fact to most heirs of African presidents – whether it is Angola, South Africa or Mozambique, the heirs of the political elite turn deals worth millions. Dos Santos is particularly successful in this regard – recently the American magazine “Forbes” announced that she is Africa’s first billionaire.
Under the rule of the dos Santos family, Angola has become a vivid example of the fact that an economic boom does not necessarily lead to the enrichment of the people. Thanks to oil exports, as well as billions in loans from China, in the period 2004-2008 Angola’s economic growth reached 17 percent, a decline was recorded only after the outbreak of the financial crisis. The country is in second place in Africa in terms of oil production – after Nigeria, and in terms of total economic capacity it ranks third after South Africa and Nigeria. But when it comes to protecting human rights, Angola ranks far down the list, ranking 148 out of 187 countries analyzed by Human Rights Watch.
From the first restaurant to the first billion
The footprint of the petrodollars is most visible in the capital, Luanda. The city is so small that it can’t really hold more than 1 million people. But 5 million live in it – under extremely different conditions. Oil companies have reserved entire blocks for their employees, the rent for many of the apartments exceeding 10,000 euros per month. The streets are congested, 2,000 new cars are imported into the country every day. On the periphery, new and new ghettos are constantly springing up – the gap between the gainers and the losers from the oil boom is getting deeper and deeper.
Isabel dos Santos is definitely among the winners, and by birth. She is the daughter of Jose dos Santos from his first marriage with the Russian Tatyana Sergeevna Kukanova. After her parents’ divorce, Isabel lives in London, where she studies engineering. At the same time, civil war is ravaging her homeland. The war is not yet over when Isabelle opens her first restaurant in Luanda. Meanwhile, it is the main shareholder in Portugal’s largest cable TV station ZON and holds 19.5 percent of the shares of the Portuguese bank BPI. If you add to this her participation in the bank BIC and in the telecommunications company Unitel, you get exactly 1 billion dollars.
Is the origin of her money completely transparent? “Quite the opposite,” says Professor Peter Lewis, an expert on Africa. “Angola’s main problem is the complete lack of transparency,” says Lewis and adds: “The heads of the most important companies in Angola are always members of the presidential family, functionaries of the ruling party or senior military officers.”
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