Alfred Beit (15 February 1853 – 16 July 1906) was an Anglo-German gold and diamond magnate in South Africa, and a major donor and profiteer of infrastructure development on the African continent.

He also donated much money to university education and research in several countries, and was the "silent partner" who structured the capital flight from post-Boer War South Africa to Rhodesia.

Beit's assets were structured around the so-called Corner House Group, which through its holdings in various companies controlled 37 per cent of the gold produced at the Witwatersrand's goldfields in Johannesburg in 1913.

Responding to a demand for business premises, he bought a piece of land and built twelve corrugated iron sheds for offices and rented eleven out monthly and kept one for himself.

His South-African assets formed the basis for the Corner House Group, which both controlled holding-companies like the Rand Mines and acted as an important network for several of the leading Randlords of the time.

Inspired by Rhodes's imperialist vision,[citation needed] he took part in the planning and financing of the unsuccessful Jameson Raid of late 1895 which was intended to trigger a coup in the South African Republic in the Transvaal.

[6] In 1906 he made the donation of two million mark to the stock capital of the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung, a charity dedicated to spend its interest for the benefit of a precursor of the University of Hamburg.

In his will he set up the Beit Trust through which he bequeathed large sums of money (£1,200,000) for infrastructure development in the former Northern and Southern Rhodesia, later modified to university education and research in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.

In recognition of his bequests the Royal School of Mines, a faculty of Imperial College London, erected a large memorial to Beit flanking the entrance to its building.