Tanzania’s Indian Dollar billionaire, Mohammed “Mo” Gulamabbas Dewji, was on Thursday, October 11, 2018, kidnapped by unknown men.
The four abductors, said to be Caucasian, reportedly went into the Colosseum Hotel in Dar es Salaam and came out with a person.
Dewji was allegedly taken by the abductors at 5AM as he walked into a gym in the hotel for his routine morning workout. The hotel is located in Dar’s affluent Oyster Bay neighbourhood.
Police have launched a manhunt into the circumstances that led to Dewji’s kidnapping. The authorities say that three people have been arrested in connection with the incident. They also confirmed that two of the abductors could be foreign nationals.
The motive for Dewji’s abduction is still unclear. According to a witness who sought anonymity, he was about to drop a passenger at the hotel when the incident happened.
“I was about to drop my passenger at the hotel when I saw four masked individuals standing close to the hotel.”
The witness, who is a cab driver, added that all the hotel security guards ran away after one of the four masked men fired one bullet in the air.
As one of the richest Tanzanians, Dewji became the first Tanzanian to cover Forbes Magazine in 2013. Dewji is the president and owner of Tanzanian conglomerate Mohammed Enterprises Tanzania Limited (MeTL), the Group which was founded by his father in the 1970s. MeTL Group is the largest privately owned conglomerate in Tanzania.
Born the second of Gulamabbas Dewji and Zubeda Dewji’s six children, Dewji went to Arusha Primary School and later went to the International School of Tanganyika (IST) in Dar es Salaam.
He later enrolled at the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy in Orlando, Florida in 1992. The young Dewji also attended Trinity Preparatory School for 11th Grade and for his last and final year of high school, he attended the Saddle Brooke High School in Florida.
Dewji graduated in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in International Business and Finance and a Minor in Theology from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
When Dewji returned home, he took over the management of MeTL and after working for two years, he became the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
He increased MeTL’s revenues from $30 million to over $1.5 billion between 1999 and 2018.
Dewji’s conglomerate includes telecommunication, trading, manufacturing, agriculture, finance, transport and logistics, insurance, real estate and food and beverages.
MetL Group has a presence in 11 countries employing over 28,000 people. The company is targeting over 100,000 people by 2021.
In terms of contribution to the economy, MeTL’s operations contribute at least 3.5% of Tanzania’s GDP.
As of February 2018, Dewji’s net worth was estimated at US $1.5 billion. This makes him the 17th richest person in Africa and the continent’s youngest billionaire.
The 43-year-old once served as a Chama Cha Mapinduzi Member of Parliament from 2005 to 2015 representing his hometown of Singida.
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