The gray concrete slabs dominating a construction site, a stone’s throw from Kotoka International Airport, don’t look like much right now. By June, they’ll be the foundation of the first Marriott Hotel in sub-Saharan Africa—a symbol of the progress of Ghana’s economy. A brand like Marriott “will put Ghana on the map”, says Nii Ampa-Soware, chief of research at Databank in Accra, who says he “would not be surprised” if other luxury global hotel brands like Sheraton are already planning their own entrance, seeing Marriott as an example of the success to be had in Ghana. “It cements the country’s position within a certain class. Having those international brands gives the country a sense of credibility that it has ‘arrived’.” 
It’s the baby of 62-year-old entrepreneur Eissame Halabi-Ahma, who was raised in Damascus and educated in Scotland. He owns half of African Hospitality Ltd (AHL) and has spent 11 years on the Marriott project. 
The half-Ghanaian, half-Syrian son of a textile factory owner, he lives near the site in a home overflowing with expensive Persian rugs. 
Speeding through the streets of the capital in a sleek BMW, clad in a flowing Arab robe, Halabi-Ahma describes Ghana—the continent’s fastest-growing economy, with government predictions of a 14.5% GDP growth in 2011—as the “Wild Wild West”, a place where any businessman with vision and capital can make a fast return. 
While South Africa’s hotel industry suffers from oversupply in the wake of the 2010 World Cup, an influx of business travelers into Ghana has created the opposite. More than 800,000 visitors came to Ghana in 2010 and this year, that number is expected to rise. 
Halabi-Ahma estimates a shortfall of 10,000 hotel rooms. 
“There’s been a tremendous growth in the hospitality sector in Ghana in recent years,” says George Ayittey, a Ghanaian economist and author. “Oil and gas discovery, a daily non-stop flight service from North America and turmoil in neighboring countries have contributed to the tourism boom. So has Ghana’s political stability, especially as compared with government dysfunction and poor social services in the rest of West Africa.” 
The Marriott, which will have cost $120 million to develop by its opening day, is the first major project under African Ventures, a subsidiary of AHL, and its equity value is put at nearly $200 million. 
Halabi-Ahma says he’s looking for the Marriott to turn a profit of $200 million within 10 years through 221 rooms and a casino. 
A self-made entrepreneur who came to real estate and hospitality development late in the game, Halabi-Ahma is a risk-taker who forewent a university education to follow his father into the textile business. 
At one point, he tried his hand at rice farming and lost his entire $2 million investment. In 1981, he was left bankrupt in the aftermath of a military coup and sought a new venture. 
“I was always looking at Howard Hughes, how he had to fight to succeed,” he says. “If I’d had the knowledge I have today, 40 years ago, I’d be the richest person in the world.” 
He focused on real estate development, scooping up cheap land and watching it appreciate. Then there was a fortuitous meeting with a friend, who suggested he try his hand at hotels. As foreign investment swelled, business—and businessmen—poured into Ghana. But those who landed at Kotoka faced a dreary landscape of guesthouses and supposedly brand-name accommodation luxurious for Accra but considered budget-class in the West, ill-run and in need of facelifts. 
“I would never have believed Ghana would be what it is today,” Halabi-Ahma says. “People are waking up. Chinese, Koreans, Lebanese, Americans. Ghana has opened up, the whole place has become a magnet. 
When you go to Johannesburg, you see 10 people standing by the side of the road doing nothing. You come here, you see everyone running and selling by the side of the road. People want to work.” 
On a rainy August morning, not far from his home, Halabi-Ahma strolls the warren that is the Marriott building site, currently at 80% completion. More than two weeks into the Ramadan fast, he’s weak but climbs five flights of stairs with ease to a hall of rooms with glass-walled showers and bold red-orange finishes designed by Cape Town designer Les Harbottle. 
Standing near the lip of the building, he admires the view. As the urban sprawl below continues to grow and stretch, his business—bolstered by his crown jewel—will look to keep up. Halabi-Ahma is looking to put a substantial amount of his return-on-investment from the Marriott into developing other hotels in the city, along with Radisson projects in Benin and Guinea. With his showman’s flair” and the casino site below us, it’s not hard to imagine him as West Africa’s Donald Trump. 
He’s interrupted by a plane roaring overhead on its way out of the nearby airport. Accra is the rare city where proximity to the airport signals prestige—and safety for travelers more accustomed to European boardrooms than West African highways. Down the street, a dwarfed Holiday Inn—which stands to lose a healthy chunk of its business to the Marriott—seemed to shudder.
<h3>Too Much Room At The Inn</h3>
The boom days of the World Cup are over and across South Africa the hotel industry is facing closures and reality. The Grace Hotel, in the smart Johannesburg suburb of Rosebank, is the latest of many to close. 
The average occupancy rate of South Africa’s hotels is hovering around 48%, leaving a massive oversupply. Other hotels that have had to shut their doors in Johannesburg and Cape Town: the Alphen Hotel, Hotel Le Vendome and the Green Dolphin. The Southern Sun Grayston and the Lakes Hotel are to close by the end of the year. 
There are just too many hotels in Africa’s biggest economy. The reasons: ambition and pride. When FIFA named South Africa as the host of the 2010 World Cup, the wheels started turning. There was money to be made. Millions of visitors needed a place to stay and hotels mushroomed. 
The signs were good. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), overall spending in the hospitality industry grew by 16.7% to $1.9 billion in 2010. The number of overnight foreign visitors grew by 15.1%, while domestic visitor numbers grew 14.3%, giving a total of 15.33 million visitors in 2010. 
A year later, most of these visitors have gone and revenue has collapsed. 
African Sun Limited has blamed the closure of The Grace Hotel on fewer travelers, escalating costs and the recession. The company declared a $1 million loss in the first half of this year and blames the surplus of rooms. 
The strength of the Rand hasn’t helped, making South Africa more expensive for foreign visitors. 
The future looks a little brighter, with numbers expected to improve. 
“The market will definitely pull through; it’s just a question of how long it will take. It’s going to be a tough two years, but the following three will be very interesting,” says Brett Dungan, CEO of the Federated Hospitality Association.

West Africa’s  Donald Trump?

The African Bank’s problems could have tied the best manager in the world in knots. 
For three years the bank had been struggling to recover from the biggest ever foreign exchange scandal in South African history; most of the management were still in prison; it was short of money; the board was divided; on top of that the bank had gone through a massive recapitalization. 
On a leather chair, in the middle of it all, sat the CEO, Gaby Magomola, who was about to go through the worst day of his life in business and suffer the prolonged pain of its aftermath. 
Magomola was the man leading the turnaround, who had a past as complex as the problems of the bank. He was a high school drop-out, who spent six years as a convict on Robben Island, who had somehow transformed himself into a family man and Wall Street banker.
<div id="attachment_17" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-17" class="wp-image-17 size-large" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Gaby-Magomola-1024x683.jpg" alt="Gaby Magomola ponders on his worst day" width="474" height="316" />Gaby Magomola ponders on his worst day</div>
In the depths of a cold winter, Magomola was feeling increasingly uneasy in his oak-paneled office and double-breasted suits. 
The problem was the board and management of the African Bank were divided and the cracks were showing in the polished veneer of South Africa’s first and biggest wholly black-owned financial institution. 
At this time, Magomola’s determination and desperation to hang onto the top job at the African Bank ran deeper than any desire for the social trappings. His vulnerability and pain stemmed from his passionate belief that the bank was more than just a money lender. To Magomola, the African Bank was a potent symbol of the economic emancipation of the oppressed: the people he had grown up with. 
In many ways, Magomola embodied the dream. The Magomolas became the first black family to move into the affluent and lily white Wendywood suburb in Johannesburg in 1986, in firm defiance of the apartheid laws. 
In fact, most events in Magomola’s 44-year existence had been the calculated moves of a man who believes he deserves more than circumstances offer. 
He was born in a township near Johannesburg—an average African kid with an above average mind. His home was Bekkersdal, his mother was a casual worker in a nearby town and his dad a store clerk. Despite early academic promise, Magomola dropped out of high school one year before matric and submerged himself in the anti-apartheid struggle. This landed him on Robben Island in 1963 aged 19, where he spent years in the company of political leaders like former South African president Nelson Mandela. 
Magomola completed matric in prison and later, a Bachelor of Commerce degree through long-distance learning university, UNISA. The dream was to qualify as a Chartered Accountant. The setback was merely the lack of segregated toilets in South Africa’s big accounting firms. 
In 1976, Magomola, his wife, Nana, and children left for the United States. Magomola had won a Fulbright scholarship to study towards a Master’s degree in Business Administration at Ball State University in the American Midwest. 
Magomola graduated and found work in Citibank in New York, where he says he “learnt the art of business and the beauty of living with people of different races”. The call of Africa became too loud to ignore in 1982 and Magomola transferred to Citibank’s Johannesburg branch. It closed shortly after President PW Botha’s now infamous Rubicon Speech—which quashed any hopes of political reform in the country. 
In 1986, Magomola’s world was at his feet. A stint at First National Bank (FNB) was followed by an offer from the bank of his dreams. The African Bank was a lender under Reserve Bank watch, with almost no capital, big losses and no leadership on account of the majority of management residing in prison following the fraudulent forex dealing. Mildly put, it was a Herculean job. 
Magomola pursued a private recapitalisation of the bank’s balance sheet and the target was African communities. The dream was economic grass-roots activism. “Political struggle was not enough. People had to own their own institutions,” he says. 
It all boiled down to a conflict over strategy. The Magomola camp wanted the African Bank’s expansion to be a gradual process, a five-year plan around funding informal, small and medium enterprises in the burgeoning township economies. 
The other, much more powerful camp held a vision of fast growth based on a model successful among the big boys like FNB. 
“There was no realization of the complexity that the amount of business a bank can do depends on the capital it has,” says Magomola. 
The job of a CEO, with a board divided, was not an easy one and the moment of truth for Magomola came just before lunch on a cold winter’s day by the hand of an old friend. 
There had been a tense board meeting. Magomola was back in his office wondering what to do. All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door. On the threshold stood founder and chairman Dr Sam Motsuenyane—the very man who had enticed him to the African Bank from his cushy position at FNB just three years earlier. Magomola calls it a classic “et tu, Brute?”. Without saying a word, Motsuenyane handed over a letter demanding his resignation. 
“I thought we had a warm relationship; he was not the kind of chairman that interfered in the day to day running of the business,” says Magomola. 
Worse was to come. Letters from management said Magomola’s crimes ranged from favoritism to an attempt to bring American standards into an African business—taboo in the late 1980s, when African nationalism was on the crest of a wave. 
In the depths of his worst day, Magomola staggered from disbelief to quiet desperation. He tried to rally his troops only to find they had all deserted him. 
Magomola’s head was on the chopping block and he could do nothing about it—he was gone. 
Grief followed denial and Magomola descended into a deep depression and alcohol. The banks repossessed the house in leafy Wendywood and the luxury car. 
More than 20 years later, Magomola says that the real pain from his dismissal was rooted in the deep-seated belief that he was helping build a new economy. 
“I received a lot of offers but none were attractive in the way I had aspired to make a difference when I was on Robben Island,” he says. 
Redemption came a year later when the Foundation for African Business and Consumers Services approached Magomola to create another African lender and he became the pioneer of black economic empowerment. Now he helps his son, Thabo, run an investment holding company.
<h3>Looking back, what would you have done differently?</h3>
I may, in the circumstances, have breached the basics of the changed environment I was operating under. The concept of a corporate strategy and its implementation would have been better grasped at the level of my colleagues at the larger banks where I was trained and worked. However, operating under a board of directors who had not had a similar re-orientation such as the one I received through my exposure abroad, was in itself an obstacle. Walking too far ahead of those whom you lead can be counterproductive.

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West Africa’s Donald Trump?

Et tu, Brute?