Lately I'm stunned having to read the Forbes rich list but clueless as regard how they got their fact right because its like being nosey in other people's business but how do they really know peoples networth and assets

aaronson:
Lately I'm stunned having to read the Forbes rich list but clueless as regard how they got their fact right because its like being nosey in other people's business but how do they really know peoples networth and assets

What they do is to access publicly available information about companies that these people have a holding in. For example, if I have 1Million Shares worth 100 Naira per share in company A, my networth is 100Million Naira. Also, if I own 10% of company B that has a market value of N1Billion, I have a networth of N100Million. Also, they tally up assets such as Land, Buildings, Leases, Stock etc to get a fair value of their holdings. Note that these things fluctuate daily and they measure how much a billionaires wealth has grown or declined in a day. Its shown on their website in real time. Its harder to do that in Africa due to bad record keeping and corruption though. This is why there are more white people on the list than Africans.

aaronson:
Lately I'm stunned having to read the Forbes rich list but clueless as regard how they got their fact right because its like being nosey in other people's business but how do they really know peoples networth and assets

America and Europe is different from Africa. In most western countries they have records and with a 10 dollars fee, name, SSN, date of birth and the internet, you can get someone life history like his previous places of employment, his credit report, his criminal records and other informations. forbes uses this tools to determine the wealth of individuals. Also they can get the tax filling of the individual if the individual grant them access to it. We need to learn how to keep records in Africa