Money

The Richest Person on Each Continent

Published

6 years ago

November 2, 2017

Jeff Desjardins

The Richest Person on Each Continent

With a stock price surge of 13% after Amazon’s most recent quarterly filing, Wall Street analysts were reportedly “shocked” by the company’s rapid growth. The e-commerce juggernaut beat both quarterly revenue and earnings forecasts, and continues to trailblaze with a 34% revenue growth rate.

This boded well for the net worth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which fluctuates wildly based on Amazon stock price movements. In fact, the recent jump in price on October 27 helped catapult him past Bill Gates (again) to become the richest person in North America, as well as the entire world.

As of publication time, according to Forbes’ real-time wealth tracker, his wealth stands at $92.6 billion.

Net Worth Leaders by Continent

Today’s graphic comes to us from HowMuch.net and it shows the richest person on each continent.

Here is the full breakdown:

Person	Continent	Net Worth	Source of Wealth
Jeff Bezos	North America	$92.6B	Technology
Jorge Paulo Leman	South America	$30.8B	Food and beverage
Amancio Ortega	Europe	$77.8B	Fashion, real estate, investing
Aliko Dangote	Africa	$13.7B	Cement, sugar, flour, salt
Mukesh Ambani	Asia	$41.9B	Oil an gas
Gina Rinehart	Oceania	$16.6B	Mining

Net worth figures from HowMuch.net as of November 3, 2017

To be thorough, HowMuch.net also “nominated” a person to represent the continent of Antarctica, even though it has no permanent residents.

Chosen for this title? It’s none other than Arnold W. Donald, the CEO of Carnival, the world’s largest cruise company, which monetizes the icy continent for its Antarctic cruises on a regular basis.

This graphic has been amended since initial publication. Just yesterday, Mukesh Ambani climbed up the list to become the richest person in Asia, and it now reflects that. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.

Related Topics:money wealth amazon jeff bezos net worth continent

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Economy

Ranked: The Top 20 Countries in Debt to China

The 20 nations featured in this graphic each owe billions in debt to China, posing concerns for their economic future.

Published

2 days ago

April 29, 2024

Marcus Lu

Ranked: The Top 20 Countries in Debt to China

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In this graphic, we ranked the top 20 countries by their amount of debt to China. These figures are as of 2022, and come from the World Bank (accessed via Yahoo Finance).

The data used to make this graphic can be found in the table below.

Country	Total external debt to China ($B)
🇵🇰 Pakistan	$26.6
🇦🇴 Angola	$21.0
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka	$8.9
🇪🇹 Ethiopia	$6.8
🇰🇪 Kenya	$6.7
🇧🇩 Bangladesh	$6.1
🇿🇲 Zambia	$6.1
🇱🇦 Laos	$5.3
🇪🇬 Egypt	$5.2
🇳🇬 Nigeria	$4.3
🇪🇨 Ecuador	$4.1
🇰🇭 Cambodia	$4.0
🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire	$3.9
🇧🇾 Belarus	$3.9
🇨🇲 Cameroon	$3.8
🇧🇷 Brazil	$3.4
🇨🇬 Republic of the Congo	$3.4
🇿🇦 South Africa	$3.4
🇲🇳 Mongolia	$3.0
🇦🇷 Argentina	$2.9

This dataset highlights Pakistan and Angola as having the largest debts to China by a wide margin. Both countries have taken billions in loans from China for various infrastructure and energy projects.

Critically, both countries have also struggled to manage their debt burdens. In February 2024, China extended the maturity of a $2 billion loan to Pakistan.

Soon after in March 2024, Angola negotiated a lower monthly debt payment with its biggest Chinese creditor, China Development Bank (CDB).

Could China be in Trouble?

China has provided developing countries with over $1 trillion in committed funding through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive economic development project aimed at enhancing trade between China and countries across Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Many believe that this lending spree could be an issue in the near future.

According to a 2023 report by AidData, 80% of these loans involve countries in financial distress, raising concerns about whether participating nations will ever be able to repay their debts.

While China claims the BRI is a driver of global development, critics in the West have long warned that the BRI employs debt-trap diplomacy, a tactic where one country uses loans to gain influence over another.

Editor’s note: The debt shown in this visualization focuses only on direct external debt, and does not include publicly-traded, liquid, debt securities like bonds. Furthermore, it’s worth noting the World Bank data excludes some countries with data accuracy or reporting issues, such as Venezuela.