Nigerian billionaire Abdul Samad Rabiu tells Tutu Foundation fellows in Cape Town that Africa's greatness is built intentionally, one day at a time

Abdul Samad Rabiu, the Nigerian billionaire and founder of BUA Group, addressed fellows at the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town on Monday, sharing his entrepreneurial journey and engaging in what he described as a deep, wide-ranging conversation about Africa's economic future and the responsibilities that come with ambition at scale.

Rabiu, whose combined fortune recently crossed $14 billion following record results at BUA Cement and BUA Foods, said the experience stood out not for the story he told but for the quality of engagement that followed. The fellows, drawn from the Tutu Foundation's network of young African leaders, pressed him with questions that reflected both intellectual seriousness and a shared conviction that the continent's development is theirs to shape.

"What stood out most wasn't just telling my story," Rabiu wrote in an Instagram post describing the visit. "It was the depth of the conversation that followed. The questions, the curiosity, and the shared belief that we all have a role to play in shaping a better future for Africa."

The discussion, he said, centred on 3 themes: vision, responsibility and the power of thinking beyond self-imposed limitations. They are themes Rabiu has embodied in his own career, having built BUA Group from a commodity trading company founded in 1988 into one of Nigeria's most powerful industrial conglomerates, spanning sugar refining, flour milling, pasta, rice, cement, ports and real estate. His listed companies, BUA Cement and BUA Foods, together carry a combined market capitalisation of more than N25 trillion on the Nigerian Exchange.

"If there's one thing I took away, it's this: the potential is undeniable, and the responsibility is ours," he said. "Africa's greatness isn't a distant dream. It's something we build, intentionally, every single day."

The foundation he spoke at

The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation was established to carry forward the values and vision of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and anti-apartheid icon who died in December 2021. The foundation runs a fellows programme that brings together young African leaders from across the continent to develop the ethical, intellectual and practical tools to drive meaningful change in their communities and countries. Rabiu's appearance as a speaker placed one of Africa's most successful living industrialists in direct conversation with the next generation of African leaders at a moment when the continent's economic narrative is being shaped by both extraordinary wealth creation and persistent structural inequality.

Cape Town, where Archbishop Tutu spent much of his life and ministry, carries a particular weight for the kind of pan-African conversation Rabiu was invited to lead. The city sits at the southernmost edge of a continent that Rabiu has argued, repeatedly and publicly, must be developed by Africans rather than waited for by them.

His visit to the Tutu Foundation follows a period of remarkable personal wealth accumulation driven entirely by the performance of Nigerian companies he has built and continues to control. BUA Cement posted revenue of N1.18 trillion in 2025 and declared a dividend of N10 per share, a more than fourfold increase from the prior year. BUA Foods generated profit after tax of N518.39 billion, nearly doubling its 2024 earnings. Those results drove BUA Cement shares up 83% year to date by late March 2026 and BUA Foods to become the second most valuable stock on the Nigerian Exchange by market capitalisation.

The wealth Rabiu now commands is ultimately the product of the kind of intentional, long-horizon industrial thinking he was in Cape Town to discuss. He started BUA International in 1988 as a commodities trader. He moved into sugar refining in the early 2000s, breaking an 8-year monopoly in the Nigerian market. He pushed into cement manufacturing through the acquisition of the Cement Company of Northern Nigeria in 2009 and the construction of the Obu Cement Plant in Edo State, which came online in 2015. He listed BUA Cement on the NGX in 2020 and BUA Foods in 2022, converting decades of private industrial development into public market accountability and access.

None of that happened quickly. All of it happened with the kind of deliberate, compounding commitment to industrial ownership that Rabiu was describing to the Tutu Foundation fellows when he told them Africa's greatness is built every day, intentionally, not discovered or inherited.

At 65 and now Africa's 3rd wealthiest individual, Rabiu could reasonably occupy himself with his own enterprises. That he accepted the invitation to Cape Town and called the experience one of his most memorable recent engagements says something about how he sees the next chapter: not as a personal wealth story but as an African one, with the next generation holding at least as much of the responsibility as his own.