KemetLeads
Mohammed Dewji
He bet on factories in an economy Nyerere had nationalised, then spent nine days in the hands of kidnappers.
The rise
Born in Singida on 8 May 1975 into a Tanzanian trading family of Indian origin, Dewji studied at Georgetown and in 1998 came home to Mohammed Enterprises, the shop his grandmother had opened and his father had grown into an import business. Within a few years he was running it.
What they did
He turned a trading house into a manufacturer, refining imported palm oil at home, then adding soap, textiles, beverages, farming and logistics until MeTL operated in eleven countries with some 28,000 employees and $1.5 billion in revenue by 2018. He sat in parliament for the ruling CCM from 2005 to 2015 and in 2016 became, per Forbes, the first Tanzanian to sign the Giving Pledge.
The full picture
For a decade he was a ruling-party MP and owner of one of the country's largest private employers. In May 2016 a group company was accused of hoarding 2,000 tonnes of sugar; it denied this. On 11 October 2018 gunmen seized him in Dar es Salaam; freed nine days later, he said no ransom was paid. Only a taxi driver was charged.
Why it matters
Tanzania appears in the collection only through the state — Nyerere and Samia. Dewji is the counter-story: an industrialist who bet on manufacturing rather than extraction in an economy Nyerere had nationalised.
“I decided a long time ago that I do not need any more personal wealth.”