From working as a taxi driver to being one of the most important fortunes in Africa: who is Mike Adenuga

From working as a taxi driver to being one of the most important fortunes in Africa: who is Mike Adenuga

November 4, 2024 – 22:00

The businessman managed to form one of the largest telecommunications companies in Nigeria, with more than 60 million subscribers in the country.

Mike Adenuga He became one of the richest people in Africa thanks to his telecommunications company, Globacom. The businessman built a wealth of millions of dollars by taking a large share of the market in his native Nigeria, Ghana and Benin. Its success allowed it to diversify with investments in Equitorial Trust Bank and the oil explorer, Conoil.

Its flagship company was recognized for being the first in Nigeria to build a high-speed fiber optic cable, Glo-1, which underwater connected the United Kingdom to Nigeria. This work required an investment of 800 million dollars in 2011. Since thenGlobacom added a total of 60 million subscribers in their country of origin.

How Mike Adenuga became a millionaire

The Nigerian came from a middle class family, his father was a teacher and his mother was a businesswoman from the Yoruba people. Adenuga was able to finish his secondary education without difficulty but He had to work as a taxi driver to pay for his university in the United States. The billionaire studied at Northwestern Oklahoma State University with a degree in Business Administration and would later have a postgraduate degree at Pace University in New York.

Adenuga returned to his country at the age of 26 and It began selling lace fabrics and distributing beverages in 1979.. This stage lasted more than a decade until he was able to access a drilling license in 1991 and found its first oil field in the Nigerian province of Ondo. In this oil well he founded the first native company to be able to extract the material in a commercial quantity in the country.

His arrival in the telecommunications market would be unsuccessful after his permit was revoked shortly after. In 2003 he had his revenge and gathered more than a million clients in more than 87 cities in Nigeria. This led to him being nominated for the African Telecommunications Awards (ATA) in 2007 for African Entrepreneur of the year. In addition, he expanded his business to Ghana and Benin.

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Mike Adenuga’s net worth today

The magazine that specializes in analyzing the fortunes of billionaires, Forbes, positioned the Nigerian’s wealth as the fifth largest in Africa. This was made possible thanks to Adenuga’s efforts in his career, which allowed him to gather a fortune of 6.6 billion dollars.


Source: Ambito

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