Top Companies in Africa

The Africa Report just published their list of top-500 African companies. This ranking is based on turnover (2014 data), and it includes companies operating in Africa whether they are homegrown or multinational affiliates.

Some highlights (refer to the tables below):

Top-10 companies in Africa: There hasn’t been much variation relative to last year:

• Sanlam, a South-African insurance company, came out of the top-10
• Bidvest Foods, another South-African company in the agribusiness sector, came in.

Top-10 companies in sub-Saharian Africa (SSA) (excluding South Africa):

• Companies that came out of the top-10:
  -Flour Mills of Nigeria, agribusiness, Nigeria
  -Société Nationale de Raffinage, refining, Cameroon
  -Kansanshi Mining, mining, Zambia
  -Total Gabon, petroleum, Ghana
• Companies that came in to the top-10:
  -Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures, petroleum, Cameroon
  -Total Kenya, petroleum services, Kenya
  -Safaricom, ICT/Telecoms, Kenya
  -Compagnie Miniére de I´Ogooué, mining, Gabon

Telecom MNC based in South Africa

To be noted is that Kenya is represented in the top-10 SSA companies while Nigeria has lost representation. Other points (which also applied to last year’s ranking):

• The data are consistent with the fact that 33 % of intra-African investment projects originate in South Africa (see my earlier post “African investments in Africa“);
• West Africa accounts for the majority of large SSA companies, with Nigeria at the helm as the largest economy in Africa (see “From Nigeria to Kenya“);
• The variety of industries in South Africa with large companies explains why companies from other African regions are discouraged from trying to break into those markets;
• The high number of petrol and related companies in West Africa is no surprise given these countries’ dependence on oil (see “Oil: Blessing or curse?”).

Top 10 Companies in Africa

 

Top 10 Companies in sub-Saharan Africa