Is MeTL ‘bigger’ than mining…?
One of the fastest-growing private businesses in Tanzania today is the Mohamed Enterprises-Tanzania Limited family of businesses (MeTL Group).
What is today the MeTL Group began in the early 1970s as a small trader in Dar es Salaam. Today, it is arguably Tanzania’s largest home-grown Group, estimated to be worth more than $1.5 billion today. It has made major investments in entities operating in diverse areas that include trading, agriculture, manufacturing, energy and petroleum, finance, mobile telephony, infrastructure, real estate, transport, logistics and distribution… The Group has created assorted commercial brands for products, services, infrastructural facilities, etc., that are traded or available in one form or another in Burundi, D.R. Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda and Zambia – named here strictly in alphabetical order.
Among the Group’s brands are: 21st Century Food & Packaging; Afritex Ltd; Khaki Complex; MO Cashews, MO Assurance; MeTL Agro; SIFA Advisory Ltd; East Coast Liquid Storage; East Coast Container Depot; NABICO (Bicycles); Star Oils Ltd; Musoma Textiles; Afritex; Nova TexMoque; Royal Soap & Detergent; One -A-One Products; Zefona, TPM; AP&AP Glenrich Transportation…
What with one thing leading to another, MeTL created thousands of jobs not only in Tanzania, but also in the other African countries where it also operates. It boasts 24,000 workers in Tanzania – around five per cent of total formal jobs – and contributes a goodly 3.5 per cent of the GDP! [/tradingeconomics.com › Tanzania>].
It is commendable that a business which started out as a family enterprise has in a score years grown to rival Tanzania’s mining sector!
Despite Tanzania being phenomenally-endowed with potential wealth in assorted minerals – precious, industrial, rare (tanzanite, uranium, helium, etc.) – mining contributes only about four per cent of the GDP. For example, mining contributed only 3.7 per cent of the GDP in 2014!
Tanzania is Africa’s fourth-largest gold producer after South Africa, Ghana and Mali, and accounts for some 2 per cent of the world’s gold output. Yet – nearly 58 years post-Independence from alien rule in 1961 – Tanzanians still wallow in abject poverty as one of the world’s 25 poorest populations despite being under home-grown leaderships…
No wonder the likes of MeTL Group are gaining the upper hand, increasingly taking a leading role as one of the engines powering sustainable econo-growth leading to palpable/tangible socio-economic development on the ground.
As already noted herein above, MeTL started out in the early 1970s as the Ghulam Dewji family business. Then ‘Mo’ Dewji (born on May 8, 1975) descended on the scene after graduating in business studies in the US in 1998.
As MeTL’s Chief Financial Officer two years later, ‘Mo’ spearheaded strategies to acquire somewhat cheaply from the Government loss-making parastatals that were privatized in the early 2000s.
In due course of time and sheer business genius, Mo turned MeTL into the largest privately-owned conglomerate, boosting its annual revenues from $30m in 1999 to over $1.5bn today – and earned for itself the 2016 ‘President’s Manufacturer of the Year Award.’ Which says a lot for it -- and for Mo, whose personal motto is: ‘When God blesses you financially, don’t raise your standard of living. Raise your standard of GIVING.’ [ https://mohammeddewji.com/>]...
Oh, it’s a captivating story that’s just beginning – especially in the context of Tanzania’s industrialization agenda and National Development Vision-2025… Cheers!
