“My grandmother was a great person. She was so disciplined that from the time she woke up she had the whole day planned while looking after her grandchildren. When she died at the age of 86, one week before she was still going to work. She would go and manage all the warehouses. She taught us discipline, to always do business ethically, hard work pays off at the end and to save money, value money and don’t just spend it unnecessarily.”
The next generation was to widen the way to the family fortune. Dewji’s father – Gulamabbas Dewji – took the chance to complete higher education and when he returned to the family business in Singida.

“Once he returned, he started trading, there were a lot of Agri-commodities at that time. He would sell that to people who actually exported it. He got better and better and later started buying trucks and doing his own logistics. In the mid-1980s he opened his own office and we moved to a big city close to Kilimanjaro- Arusha. We went to school there. My grandmother started running the branch in Arusha and I stayed with two of my siblings.”

Dewji senior steadily built the family business and also took time to nurture his son.

“My father took me to China when I was eleven years old. It was an import/export business. He would import second-hand clothing. When I went to China, it was really cold and the flights were getting cancelled. He would make me sit through meetings, while he was trading, buying, selling, arguing. In the evening he would ask me what I have learnt and if I had any questions. And every Christmas he would make me work, while my friends were playing soccer. I asked him why my friends don’t and he asked what their parents do.

I said: dentist; teacher etc and he said, unfortunately, your father is an entrepreneur! I was getting frustrated. He would make me sit opposite him and there were like seven phones and I would listen to call after call. In the evening we would recap, so I was introduced really early.”

Yet, it was sport that caught the imagination of the young Dewji and he wanted to make it his living.

“We were a big sports family. We played a lot of golf and tennis. It all started with tennis my younger brother was really good and when he started beating me. I realised that I didn’t enjoy it as much. So, then I started playing golf. My father was happy because I always played sports like football and my father wasn’t happy, I used to break my legs. He said go out and play a non-contact sport. I started the initiative myself and I got better and better,” says Dewji.

The young man took to the golf course with a will and by the time he left primary school he was playing off a handicap of three and beating people twice his age. His father saw this nascent talent and sent his son the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy in Orlando, Florida.

“You lived there, went to school for six hours and the rest of the time learning and playing golf and gaining mental toughness. My school was small and I went to school with Jennifer Capriati. I was class president. We won the states and we went into the nationals. I played a girl in the nationals and realised she played better than me, and I didn’t play badly and I realised this wasn’t going to happen. I might as well study finance and I started at Georgetown.”

The time at Georgetown University, in Washington DC – the alma mater of Bill Clinton and Jackie Kennedy – saw perspiration that yielded a bachelor’s degree in business, with a minor in theology. While many of his fellow students struggled to stay awake during lessons, Dewji’s lecturers remember him as a serious young man prepared to stay on to talk about the economy of the country and the value of the Tanzanian shilling.

A short stint as a Wall Street trader, in New York, followed until the phone call that was to change his life. Dewji needed money for a new suit and phoned his father back in Dar es Salaam.

“He said that he believes that I could make many dollars in Tanzania and why don’t I come and join him and that we could take the business to the next level. And he didn’t send money for the suit. I didn’t enjoy it and I went back and joined him. He was a rich man; he was the largest trader. When I came, I realised that the trading game margins would get very, very tightened. You cannot have a trading country; you need an industrial base. I already felt that and there was no tax policy to protect manufacturers. And the industry failed because the tax was so low. I started talking to people and had told them, look, guys, we need to create jobs and manufacture and use raw material locally. That is where I started importing oil, flowers, rice, soap, clothing and tax styles.”

Dewji became one of the youngest CEOs in Africa at the family business MeTL where his aim was to transform from a trading company into a manufacturing behemoth. He threw himself into the task with a will and a claim to being a workaholic; a start before dawn, 100 hours-a-week and 60 meetings a month. Ironically, it was this healthy dawn trip to the gym that put Dewji’s life at risk with the infamous kidnap.

Along the way business wasn’t always easy and there was a costly problem with a ship that didn’t exist.

“Business is always a risk. Basically, when you are getting into a particular thing you know it can either go North or South… At the beginning of my career, I bought a ship full of rice. By the time the rice got onto the ship, I couldn’t insure the ship, because it was a phantom ship. I spent a couple hundred thousand dollars. They asked me why didn’t I sue the bank, because I needed the bank and that is why I did not sue them. When I talk to the CEO (of the bank), we have a great relationship, you will always have doubts but you have to keep making sure that you react properly. There will always be risks.”

But Dewji was good at spotting gaps in the market. He undercut the world’s lowest-cost textile producer- China – bringing production to Tanzania. In Sisal – used for everything from rope to coffee bags – Dewji spotted a gap when he bought a factory producing it at break-even for around $300 a ton. He had to increase his costs from $300 to $700 with modernising of the plant. He was banking on the price rising sharply. Luck smiled and the price rose to $2,100 tons – MeTL now exports more than 8,000 tons a year at a handsome profit.

Dewji’s shrewd eye for business also saw his company’s expansion across Africa that he is far from finished with come COVID-19 or recession.

“If you’re looking for agriculture you’re looking to export. Tanzania, for me, is very important. I just did a $115 million sugar investment. We are currently working with the government and we are looking for land. One country that is very interesting, is Tanzania. We are ready to commit 50 million into Rwanda. The whole ideology is, is to stick to the fast-moving, basic consumable goods where you have the know-how, machinery and the labour is cheap…We are also looking at Mozambique.”

And where will the billionaires of tomorrow going to come from?

“They have to look at the gaps. Imagine how much logistics happen between these companies around and imagine you create an app for buyers and sellers. If a buyer wants to buy Copper and they know that there is a truck coming from Tanzania. Technology will create a billionaire in time as well. The banking side We need to look at digital banking. I think that is a place to make money. On the telecoms side – I believe there is a lot of growth and money there as well,” says Dewji.

“There are no escalators or elevators, there are only stairs. You need to be disciplined. You should not think that they would make money very fast. It is a process. They must take it step-by-step… I think this year has been a tough year but going forward there are big opportunities in Africa. We can kind of work together and the opportunities are endless. We don’t know what is going to happen in the US. Things will simmer down and we will bounce back stronger.”

Whatever happens, you can be sure the youngest billionaire in Africa is looking hard for the gap.