Mohammed Dewji, CEO MeTL Group.
By Uzodinma Iweala
Mohammed Dewji is the third generation of a family of successful Tanzanian entrepreneurs. Over the past decade, as CEO he has grown his family’s business from a national trading house to a multi-billion-dollar, multinational conglomerate, generating a $2-billion fortune for himself in the process. Dewji believes the future of business is in Africa. After a week visiting his various operations across Tanzania, it is easy to see why. When most people visit Tanzania, their primary destinations are usually a safari in one of its picturesque game parks or the sweet-smelling spice markets on the island of Zanzibar. I spent my time crisscrossing Tanzania on a safari of a different sort – tracking some of the numerous entities that make up Mohammed Enterprises Tanzania Limited (MeTL), the unique and diversified group of companies that has made 39-year-old Mohammed Dewji one of Tanzania’s wealthiest and most important men.
My first stop was the sprawling A-One bottling plant in an industrial zone just off Julius Nyerere Road, one of Dar es Salaam’s main arteries. After a mid-afternoon arrival from Lagos, it was perhaps the best place to try to shake off my cross-continental, red-eye-flight-induced stupor. My guide, Nitin Vishwakarma, a five-year veteran of MeTL and the executive assistant to Mohammed Dewji, made sure I received a bottle of Mo Bomba Energy Drink, the MeTL Group’s recently introduced competitor to the internationally known Red Bull. “Try it,” he insisted and handed me a golden bottle. I’ve never been one for energy drinks, but surrounded by top A-One executives and a number of staff in the quality control and testing lab where we stood, I felt obliged. Much to the delight of the whole lab, I quickly downed a 275ml bottle specially designed for the local market. It went down easily, with a refreshing carbonated kick. I sheepishly asked for another bottle and soon felt my haze lifting away.
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