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- #138 – African Wealth & Intrepreneurship
#138 – African Wealth & Intrepreneurship
Quote, Podcast, Deep Dive, Article, Tweet.
Dimitri Gremos
January 14, 2026
Good morning everyone,
Hope you’re having a great week!
Let’s jump in.
read online on my website
read time 3 minutes
#138 at a Glance:
Quote: Chase a lifestyle, not a title.
Podcast: Chris Williamson x Andrew Huberman.
Deep Dive: The Africa Wealth Report 2025.
Article: Intrepreneurship at Linklaters.
Tweet: Keep it simple.
Quote I’ve been thinking about:
“Chase your desired lifestyle, not your desired title. People are blinded by status and labels. Once you release the need for a specific title, there is almost always an easier path to living your preferred lifestyle.”
Podcast I listened to:
Modern Wisdom #1042 - Dr Andrew Huberman
Dr Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist, Associate Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and a podcaster.
I was a little hesitant to listen to this at first.
After all, many of the conversations with Andrew Huberman can feel less like entertainment and more like ‘homework’ with a to-do list that follows, but… I must say that I really did get a lot of practical and thoughtful insights out of this.
Specifically:
Make time for silence before and after bouts of work. The more ‘bored’ you are before you begin a cognitively demanding task, the better your ability to focus and retain information will be.
It’s incredible how we’ve hamstrung ourselves to prevent our ability to think out of sheer overstimulation.
All learning is anti-forgetting.
Self-testing is the greatest form of learning.
Learning is repeated recall, not repeated exposure.
“There are too many burdens in life for anyone to be able to navigate life extremely well without notions of higher power.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
[Duration: 3 hours 5 minutes]
Deep Dive:
The Africa Wealth Report 2025
I spent a fair bit of time diving into the wealth dynamics of Africa over the weekend (as you do)...
I personally find this type of stuff incredibly fascinating. This sort of data serves as a strong indicator of global capital flows as well as geopolitical/socioeconomic trends.
The Africa Wealth Report 2025 is an annual overview of Africa’s private wealth, published by Henley & Partners, the global leader in citizenship by investment, and wealth intelligence firm New World Wealth.
‘Wealth’ is measured by the number of individuals in a given area who are:
Millionaires (liquid investable wealth of USD$1 million or more).
Centi-millionaires (liquid investable wealth of USD$100 million or more).
Billionaires (liquid investable wealth of USD$1 billion or more).
Africa’s Top 10 Wealthiest Countries (no. of millionaires):
1) South Africa (41,100)
2) Egypt (14,800)
3) Morocco (7,500)
4) Nigeria (7,200)
5) Kenya (6,800)
6) Mauritius (4,800)
7) Algeria (2,700)
8) Ghana (2,600)
9) Namibia (2,500)
10) Ethiopia (2,400)
Africa’s fastest growing millionaire hotspots (% of millionaire growth from 2015–2025):
1) Black River, Mauritius (105%)
2) Marrakech, Morocco (67%)
3) The Whale Coast, South Africa (50%)
4) Cape Winelands, South Africa (42%)
5) Cape Town, South Africa (33%)
These were some of the most notable insights that I extracted from the report:
→ While wealth is growing in certain pockets, overall millionaire numbers across Africa have contracted by around 5% over the past decade. Wide-scale economic prosperity continues to be hamstrung by turbulent geopolitics and institutional unreliability.
→ Today, Africa counts approximately 25 billionaires, 348 centi-millionaires, and 122,500 millionaires.
→ Mauritius posted 63% millionaire growth over the past decade, outpacing every other African nation.
→ Morocco managed a robust 40%, while the giants stumbled: The number of millionaires in South Africa dropped by –6% between 2015 and 2025, and Nigeria’s high-net-worth population fell by an alarming –47%.
→ While the EU struggles with 0.7% economic growth and the US continues at 1.4%, Sub-Saharan Africa moves strongly at 3.7% with the World Bank forecasting 4.1% and 4.3% economic growth in 2026 and 2027 respectively.
→ Africa’s economic narrative has long oscillated between optimism and frustration. The optimism stems from its demographics, resources, and market potential. The frustration arises from a persistent pattern of wealth extraction, commodity over-reliance, concentrated ownership, and sectors that do not generate large-scale, sustainable employment.
→ A key and concerning trend in Africa is the rise of bilateralism and the slow but noticeable retreat of leaders from the continental multi-lateralism of the past 25 years. The African Union, the continent’s primary instrument for multi-lateral cooperation, has found itself side-lined in efforts to resolve conflict and challenges among member countries.
→ The quality of life in Johannesburg and Pretoria has continued to decline in the past year owing to deteriorating transport, electricity, and water infrastructures, poor municipal management, and relatively high crime rates. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in prime property prices in central Sandton stagnating at around USD1,800/m2 , while those in Cape Town have soared over the past 5 years to reach USD5,800m2 .
You can check out the full report here.
Article I read:
Intrepreneurship at Linklaters
Came across this quietly inspiring article yesterday and felt compelled to share with you all…
Managing Associate of Linklaters, Tanya Sadoughi spent weekends learning Python and AI. She then built a tool to fix the fee-update lag that was a recurring issue in the law firm’s finance and banking department.
After pitching her “WIP Summariser”, the firm gave her a budget and a team to scale it. Seconded to tech, she helped turn it into an Excel plug-in, now rolled out firmwide after a 1,000-lawyer pilot.
How’s that for initiative.
An employee’s weekend project is now being implemented in one of the biggest law firms in the world.
Reminder to self:
“How can this be done better?”
“How can this be done faster?”
“How can this be done cheaper?”
Intrepreneurship is alive and well.
[Intrapreneurship (noun): the practice of entrepreneurial thinking and action within an established organisation, where employees initiate, develop, and implement innovations using the firm’s resources rather than creating an independent venture.]
Tweet I liked:
Keep It Simple
In a world of infinite biohacks and protocols, we often look at the ‘mountain’ of potential things we could be doing and then… most of the time… fall short.
Keep it simple.
Everything in that list is doable for most of us (except maybe the first one which is a little unrealistic especially if you’re commuting to and from work, but if that’s not possible, maybe having your last meal at least 2-2.5 hours before bed is?).
Go well this week.
Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.
Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡
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This goes a long way to helping me reach more people :)
See you in the next one,
Dimi