Top: The Mo Dewji Foundation aims to “enrich the lives and alleviate Tanzania’s citizens from poverty and hardship” through grants and project implementation. The registered charity funds the Mo Entrepreneurs Competition and Mo Scholars Programme
“Granted, MeTL is doing a lot of manufacturing, but a good
chunk of their business is still basic trading,” Azizi says. “MeTL still imports things like toothpicks, pasta, sugar, and
“I do not necessarily have those problems. I get
access to better interest rates from international financiers so my cost of borrowing is low; and then this will be another product I will just place through all my outlets and just sell; and three, I have better systems to manage this (see box out).”
Work-life-family-charity balance
Even though Dewji calls the shots and is the controlling shareholder, MeTL is still a family business. His father, Gulam Dewji, serves as the group’s chairman, while his immediate younger brother, Hussein Dewji, is the director of sales for the group. His younger sister, Fatema Dewji Jaffer, is the director of marketing for the group, while another brother, Hassan Dewji, is the director of human resources. “I enjoy working with my family,” the chief
executive says. “Everyone is actively involved and we respect
each other’s contribution to the business. My father, siblings and I try to meet at least twice a month in the office to review any important issues we might have. We’ve made it a point to be as honest and open to each other. We try to never discuss business at home. Even when we meet together for lunches and dinners at our family home, we stay away from business. It is very important to have that work-life balance at all times.” Rostam Azizi, a successful Tanzanian
businessman with interests in telecoms and port services, has been a family friend of the Dewjis for many years. According to him, while MeTL’s transition as a trading house into a manufacturing giant is commendable, he believes the group can do more to reduce Tanzania’s dependence on imports for many basic goods Tanzanians use.
When God blesses you financially, don’t raise your standard of living. Raise your standard of giving
ISSUE 72 | 2018
ballpoint pens and just brands it with its own name. I believe there is still room for them to do a lot more manufacturing, otherwise it has been a remarkable success story.” MeTL is now in its third generation. Dewji’s children are all
very young, and his nephews and nieces are still toddlers. He says he does not plan to coerce any of them to join the family business eventually. “We will allow them choose their own paths, but I do hope
they will choose to be here.” Dewji is not all about business though. He regularly speaks
at international conferences where he advocates for Africa— Tanzania in particular—as an investment destination of choice. He’s a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum and he is on the advisory board for east Africa for the Rhodes Scholarship. He also has an impressive social media profile with 487,000 Twitter followers and more than 500,000 Instagram followers. He often offers business advice to those who track his feeds, many of whom are young, aspiring entrepreneurs. MeTL is also committed to ending poverty in Tanzania via
the establishment of two bodies: the Mo Dewji Foundation and the group’s registered non-governmental organisation, Singida Yetu. Over the last five years, MeTL Group has spent more than $3 million on education, water supply, income generation, healthcare investments, and sports programmes. Having accumulated a fortune estimated at more than $1.3
billion, according to Forbes, Dewji has been seeking out ways to give back. In 2015, he launched the Mo Dewji Foundation, a registered charity that gives interest-free loans to young entrepreneurs, and provides funding support to derelict schools in Tanzania’s impoverished neighbourhoods. Dewji gave the foundation $2 million during its launch. In July last year he joined the high-profile Giving Pledge, promising to give away at least half of his wealth to philanthropic causes. Dewji is the first person from Tanzania to join the pledge, which Bill Gates and Warren Buffett launched in 2010 to spur more philanthropic giving globally. “It is the right thing to do,” he says. “Having witnessed severe poverty throughout my upbringing,
I have always felt a deep responsibility to give back to my community. At the end of the day, none of us is going to take all this wealth out of this world, so why not give? “Plus as a devout Muslim, it is required of me. I always tell
my friends: ‘When God blesses you financially, don’t raise your standard of living. Raise your standard of giving’.” What does the future hold for the family business that’s grown
from $26 million to $1.5 billion? Dewji’s ambitions for MeTL are no less lofty—it aims to
become a $5 billion entity employing 100,000 staff. Tanzania’s titans are raising east Africa onto the world stage.
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