Kenya churned out more millionaires last year, outdoing major African economies such as South Africa and Nigeria, a report released yesterday reveals.
The New World Wealth Kenya 2016 report notes the number of millionaires with a net worth of $1 million (Sh100 million) or more in Kenya increased last year by two per cent to about 8,500 High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs), with a combined wealth of $42 billion (Sh4.2 trillion).
“This makes Kenya one of the top five performing HNWI markets in Africa, along with Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Mauritius and Tanzania,” said New World Wealth head of research Andrew Amoils.
Regular interviews
According to the report, the increase of millionaires in Kenya surpassed South Africa and Nigeria where the numbers declined by 18 per cent and 28 per cent respectively.
“We expect the number of Kenyan HNWIs to grow by 80 per cent, to reach about 15,300 by 2025. The number will make Kenya one of the top 20 performing HNWI markets in the world over this period,” says the report.
The findings of the report are based on regular interviews with wealth managers, property agents and sales statistics. “We source our HNWI names from company and director databases and various luxury goods databases with a focus on prime property, yacht, art and private jet owners,” Amoils told People Daily.
Other sources include Interviews with around 800 global HNWIs a year and investor visa programme statistics in each country.
“We consider the number of million-dollar homes in each area as a sanity check when calculating city, state and suburb numbers,” said Amoils.
The report indicates Nairobi is home to the largest portion of HNWIs 6,200 individuals, Mombasa (800), Kisumu (200), Malindi (100), Kilifi (100) and Nakuru (100).
To the end of December last year, Kenyan millionaires had increased by 60 per cent from about 5,300 HNWIs in 2007 to 8,500 HNWIs.
“HNWI wealth rose by 75 per cent, from $24 billion (Sh2.4 trillion) in 2007 to $42 billion (4.2 trillion) in 2015. This made Kenya one of the top performing countries in Africa during this period,” says the report.
The report says the local construction and financial services sectors positively impacted on growth, the migration of wealthy people from other East African countries.
It further notes Kenya witnessed negative impact during the review period, as a result of depreciation of the local currency and a drop in prices of stocks listed at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Tokyo contains the biggest single cluster of millionaires today. At 466,000 the HNWI population is nearly a fifth larger than the second city, New York, with a little under 400,000.
In 10 years, New York is expected to be home to the biggest global total, with over 520,000 HNWIs, and Tokyo slipping to second place with 508,000.
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