The prestigious New African magazine has released its 2025 ranking of the 100 most influential Africans. This annual selection highlights individuals whose work has a tangible impact across the continent and beyond, spanning fields from business and public policy to technology and the arts.
The list categorizes the 100 honorees into seven sectors: Business (21 personalities), Change Makers (9), Creatives (19), Public Office (15), Sports (13), Technology (8), and Thinkers & Opinion Shapers (15).
In this year’s edition, five Tunisians have been selected, placing Tunisia behind Nigeria (21 personalities), South Africa (10), and tied with Kenya and Ghana (7 each). The Tunisian honorees—Hazem Ben Gacem, Lotfi Karoui, Semia Gharbi, Myriam Ben Salah, and Fadhel Kaboub—are featured across four of the seven categories.
Business Category
Hazem Ben Gacem, a Tunisia-born Harvard graduate, began his career in New York before joining Investcorp in 1994. He rose to become co-CEO of the Middle East’s largest non-sovereign asset manager. In late 2024, he left the firm and immediately launched BlueFive Capital, a global investment manager based in Abu Dhabi designed to channel Gulf capital into high-growth regions of the Global South. Within months, the firm surpassed hundreds of millions in assets under management, closed an oversubscribed funding round in mid-2025, and now manages billions. With offices in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Singapore, Beijing, and London—and new openings announced—it focuses on infrastructure, energy, new materials, and cross-border regional opportunities.
New African notes: “Hazem Ben Gacem spent three decades at the heart of global private markets, but it is the boldness of his latest move that has cemented his status as one of the most influential figures in Gulf and emerging markets finance.”
Lotfi Karoui is a Managing Director and Multi-Asset Credit Strategist at PIMCO, a leading global fixed-income investment manager based in New York. Previously, he was Chief Credit Strategist at Goldman Sachs, where he was responsible for research and analysis on global credit markets. He joined the firm in 2007, was named Managing Director in 2015, and became a partner in 2025. A Tunisian native, Karoui holds a PhD in Financial Economics from McGill University. He is President of the American Business and Finance Association (ABANA), where he has championed programs connecting diaspora professionals with global finance networks, creating bridges for investment flows into Africa. He also advises and mentors numerous actors promoting venture capital across the continent.
Change Makers Category
Semia Gharbi began her career as a scientist but gained global recognition as an environmental activist and educator. Leading a network of activists and educators, Gharbi is deeply committed to combating environmental threats. She notably exposed a contract for recycling Italian plastic waste in Tunisia—which was later returned to Italy—as an environmental criminal conspiracy, where the waste was destined for Tunisian landfills. The scandal led to corporate and government resignations, mysterious fires, trials, and the conviction of over 40 people. Much of this would not have been possible without Gharbi’s advocacy through the Green Tunisia Network, a coalition of over 100 environmental organizations she co-founded.
A 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize laureate, Gharbi stated: “In Tunisia, as in many other countries, we receive illegal waste from developed countries. As members of national and global civil society, we refuse to be seen as just a dumping ground. We must end waste colonialism!”
New African asserts: “While we hear about human trafficking and drug trafficking, we almost never hear about waste trafficking—an insidious trade that, according to the OECD, involves the illegal export of about 1.7 million tons of waste annually from rich countries to developing ones. Semia Gharbi is helping bring global attention to this threat and framing waste trafficking as a human, environmental, and moral outrage.”
Creatives Category
Myriam Ben Salah, raised between Tunisia and Belgium, began her career with an internship at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, France’s largest contemporary art center, where she was offered a curator position in 2009. Seven years later, she became Editor-in-Chief of the widely recognized avant-garde art magazine Kaleidoscope, based in Italy. Her recent projects include directing the 10th edition of The Abraaj Group Art Prize in Dubai. Since 2020, she has been Executive Director and Curator of the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, an independent contemporary art museum. In 2026, she will curate renowned Franco-Moroccan visual artist and filmmaker Yto Barrada’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
Thinkers & Opinion Shapers Category
Fadhel Kaboub is an economist and international policy advisor recognized for his work on finance, just energy transition, and economic sovereignty in the Global South. An Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, he advocates for climate policies prioritizing equity, resilience, and restorative justice—especially for countries most impacted by but least responsible for climate change. He also promotes policy frameworks to help Global South nations reduce dependency on foreign aid and debt, which he views as tools designed to maintain poorer countries in a dependent relationship with wealthier ones.
A prolific author, Kaboub co-wrote Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Agenda for the Global South. He has spoken at numerous forums, including COP summits, UN panels, and African climate conferences.
“For every dollar that enters Africa as aid, four dollars leave as debt repayments. That is not development cooperation—it’s systemic neocolonial extraction,” he argues. “Aid […] was designed in a system that envisions development through a Northern prism, offering temporary relief while keeping structural control and colonial hierarchies intact.”
TunisianMonitorOnline (NejiMed)
