DURBAN - Isabel dos Santos is the richest woman on the African continent, however, it seems that she might be in trouble after four of her contracts were annulled by the President of Angola João Lourenço.
This businesswoman is known to have gotten contracts worth of billions of dollars because of her father, the former President of Angola, Eduardo dos Santos.
According to iAfrica, dos Santos was awarded four contracts that were worth $22 billion in the space of two years. However, the tables turned when Lourenço stepped into office.
An article by Bloomberg about the annulled port said that the cancelling of dos Santos' contracts was to loosen the family's grip on the Angolan economy.
Annulled contracts
The four contracts that were annulled recently by President Lourenço involved various projects around the Angolan capital of Luanda.
The first contract was a $15 billion revamp of the capital that dos Santos' company had a monopoly over. The project was handed to dos Santos in 2015 and it was called the Luanda Metropolitan Master Plan.
The second contract was for the building and construction of the Caculo-Cabaça dam and hydropower station.
The $4,5 billion project was to be built by a consortium of dos Santo's shell company Niara Holding and the China Gezhouba Group Corporation.
According to iAfrica, the Industrial Commercial Bank secured financing for Angolan oil in return.
The third contract was for the Corimba Coastal Road that would connect Luanda to the Corimba neighbourhood. This contract was worth $700 million and was going to be financed by two Chinese banks.
The final contract was the building of a port in Luanda and it allowed Isabel to have exclusive rights over the port. The contract was given to dos Santos a week before her father would step down from the office of the presidency. According to Blomberg, the project would have been funded completely by private investors.
Net worth
The richest woman in Africa (for now) has a real-time net worth of $2,5 billion, a significant drop to the net worth that she had in the beginning of 2017. Her net worth puts her at 924 on the Forbes Billionaires ranking for 2018 and she is at number 9 on the Forbes Africa's Billionaires list for 2018.