Sitting in the foyer of a Kigali hotel with Raj Rajendran, sipping Rwandan tea, the conversation centers around Coimbatore, the bustling textile town in South India about 3,500 miles from Kigali.
When Rajendran speaks about his hometown, in the South Indian language of Malayalam this writer is familiar with, he manages to create a vision of Coimbatore that is a mirror image of Kigali.
The balmy air, the foliage, the clean roads and the warm enterprising people of Coimbatore could be cut and pasted in Kigali, and nothing would seem out of place.
<div id="attachment_3154" style="width: 215px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3154" class="size-medium wp-image-3154" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Raj-Rajendran_3924-701x1024-205x300.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="300" />Raj Rajendran MD of GreenLeaf, founded about a year ago to market farm products to high-end hotels and restaurants. They are opening a new shop in June selling packaged vegetables and fruits. He is also a partner in two other companies he started recently</div>
It is little wonder Rajendran feels at home in Kigali, and although his family lives in Coimbatore, this is where he will spend the rest of his working life, and even retire in.
The affection this affable entrepreneur has for Rwanda is evident in the love Rwanda has for him. Rajendran is very popular amongst his friends and business associates here.
RwandAir CEO John Mirenge calls him munyaneza, meaning ‘joyful’ in Kinyarwanda.
“He is very well-liked,” says Mirenge.
For Rajendran, the journey from Coimbatore to Kigali was one of discovery – and serendipity.
Like any Tamil boy born and raised in Coimbatore – known as the Manchester of South India for its ubiquitous spinning mills – Rajendran studied textile engineering like his bespectacled peers, from the prestigious PSG College of Technology.
Not surprisingly, he started his career in a spinning mill in Coimbatore in 1974, thereafter arming himself with an MBA in marketing and foreign trade. After a stint with the National Handloom Development Corporation, an Indian government organization, which saw him traveling across India, he joined as the group president of a global company with interests in finance, education, real estate and plantations.
He was in Coimbatore when in 1999, somebody tipped him off about an opening in a country called Rwanda.
“I didn’t have any chance of knowing, I didn’t know where it was,” says Rajendran.
The job offered was as the Managing Director of UTEXRWA, the only textile manufacturing company in Rwanda at the time.
“I did a quick search on Yahoo and saw a picture of Kigali’s commercial street. It looked so pathetic, much worse than our [Indian] villages at the time. I found that all of Rwanda only had one textile company, unlike Coimbatore which had so many. I also read up on the genocide and found that about 300 people in the company [UTEXRWA] had been killed; that got me interested.”
UTEXRWA was started in 1985 as a family-owned company and fabric processing house.
“They had $18 million in 1993 which was very good. But in 1994 [during the genocide], everything was looted, all their raw materials. They incurred heavy cash losses in the subsequent years until 1998,” says Rajendran.
By the end of 1999, Rajendran was on board. He was yet to discuss the terms and conditions of his contract, but he came – relying solely on instinct.
He was in for a pleasant surprise –
and has never regretted his decision.
“I loved the country’s beauty, the climate and the people. I have traveled all over Africa, but Rwanda is incomparable. Africa may be synonymous with filth and corruption, but everything here is reliable and systematic. They have a culture of cleanliness. And they have the best leadership.”
Rajendran recalls his first meeting with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame.
“My first interaction with him was the day he was sworn in, at the cocktail party held in his honor. We shook hands and I got a picture taken with him. He is not known to smile, but that picture had him smiling, and people asked: who is this guy who made him laugh?”
In 2000, Rajendran says he was invited as the only foreigner from the private sector to be part of the delegation for the president’s state visit to Nairobi. That is when Rajendran told him about the possibility of producing silk in Rwanda – like they did back home.
“The climatic conditions for silk in Rwanda are the same as in India. About 85 percent of India’s mulberry silk is from [the South Indian state of] Karnataka. The soil, the climatic conditions and terrain were similar to those of Karnataka in those days. I told him we don’t need to import silk, that Rwanda is fully capable of producing it,” says Rajendran, who was consequently asked to explore the possibilities at UTEXRWA.
He traveled to Karnataka, and brought back with him 100 mulberry stems, which he planted at UTEXRWA, and also in Rwanda’s eastern province.
“They grew so well and with leaf sizes four times bigger than we have seen in India, and much healthier,” says Rajendran.
In 2003, the Food and Agriculture Organization sent a Korean expert to meet with Rajendran, bringing with him silkworm eggs. The mulberry trees had grown by then.
“The cocoons were much bigger than the ones I saw in India. The Koreans gave a positive report. We wanted a bigger project to create more employment. And at the annual retreat that year in Rwanda, it was decided that sericulture is big business.”
Starting with four model units and machinery, UTEXRWA started processing. Rajendran also introduced Indian handloom fabrics.
“I brought a little bit of South India into Rwanda. We made silk ties, scarves, garments, and even exported silk pyjamas to Canada. I once made 20 different ties for Kagame,” says Rajendran.
After about 12 years with UTEXRWA, Rajendran decided to head home. He boarded the plane to India, but he left his heart in Kigali.
He returned to Rwanda a year later, this time, as an entrepreneur, co-founding an investment promotion company called Proman Associates, and Payoda, handholding investors, offering them all the information they needed to easily set up business in Rwanda.
Rajendran is also currently the Managing Director of Green Leaf, an enterprise in Kigali linking farmers with retail and offering packaged fruits and vegetables for the high-end market such as five-star hotels, restaurants and department stores.
He is also keen on reviving the sericulture business in Rwanda. From Coimbatore to Kigali, the silk route beckons again.

The Silky Entrepreneur  Who Made Kagame Laugh

The city of Mutare, set in a hollow on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, is sweltering under another blue sky. In this border town hemmed in by dramatic mountains, a small scene is being played out in the historic stage play that is Zimbabwe’s indigenization policy.
The lead actor is 52-year-old Charles Tawazadza—a man who has gone from manager to boss at this busy dry dock almost overnight, thanks to the country’s attempt to give black Zimbabweans a larger slice of the economy.
<div id="attachment_143" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-143" class="size-large wp-image-143" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dryport_4-801x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="606" />Mutare Dry Port, Charles Tawazadza</div>
“When you talk about this wealth, you are talking about the wellbeing of generations. We did not borrow this land or economy from our ancestors. We borrowed it for the future generations to come. If we don’t acquire it and make good use of it, future generations will be spitting on our graves instead of praising us,” he says.
The company, through which Tawazadza now strolls confidently in his corporate uniform, is one of thousands of foreign-owned outfits across Zimbabwe that appear destined to be taken over by people born and bred in the country. They range from mines to banks and safari companies. The Empowerment Ministry has threatened to revoke or suspend operating licences for more than 500 foreign owned companies, which haven’t yet fallen in line. That is a lot of valuable equity up for grabs and the word is the well connected are hovering.
Tawazadza has taken over Mutare Dry Port, a shipping cargo company with a $3 million asset value. It used to be called GMS Cornelder and had been owned by Mozambican investors since 2000. When pressure came to hand over 51% of the equity, the Mozambicans put forward Tawazadza, who had worked in management at the company for many years, to take control and settled for being minority shareholders.
Even Tawazadza’s name fitted—in Shona it means “to fill up”. Mutare Dry Port has rail sidings with a holding capacity of 24 wagons, a general and bonded warehouse, plus container handling equipment. It has global networks through partnerships operating under specialized air and ocean freights, road and rail transportation, and warehousing and container handling. It means everything from second-hand cars from Japan, to fruit from South America, arrives at Mutare Dry Port to fill up the rolling stock. Many of the goods arrive at docks in Beira in Mozambique and are shipped by rail to Mutare.
Rail runs into Tawazadza’s huge transit shed and container yard, which handles 180,000 tons of shipments every month. There’s even a runway—a legacy of the British Royal Air Force, which used the site as a base during World War II. Tawazadza compares the indigenization laws to the 2000 seizure of farms by liberation war veterans. He says they too are part of an “economic emancipation” program to empower black people.
Against the allegations that these deals are merely for political cronies, Tawazadza says: “I have never met Mugabe. The laws are not anything to enrich Mugabe. He was our leader during the liberation struggle, and he is our leader today in this struggle for economic emancipation. “If you look at the noise which is coming out of the indigenization and economic empowerment, it will come to pass,” Tawazadza says.
The whites in Zimbabwe, Tawazadza says, are “calledRhodesians because Cecil John Rhodes was here to create wealth for them. And this is what President Mugabe is doing for us.” President Mugabe’s jumbled commercial farm seizures have reduced agricultural production, leaving unexploited farms, after driving out over 4,000 former white farmers in the name of an agrarian revolution. Independent economist John Robertson claims farm production is 60% down compared to 1998, although government figures refute this. “Over 4,000 white farmers have been replaced by over 400,000 black owners. All these blacks represent Mugabe’s vision,” Tawazadza said. “People are negotiating and cutting deals without government intervention. I acquired this company on my own.
No one from government came to negotiate on my behalf,” Tawazadza said. But the laws could prove a Pyrrhic victory for a country desperate to emerge from a long recession. Capital could dry up, and the capacity of Zimbabweans to borrow and increase production may be limited. Investors say the laws could scare foreign companies with concerns about property rights, leaving Zimbabwe as a hard sell.
Ray William Black, of Investec Securities, said at a recent investor conference in Harare: “The economy of Zimbabwe has been improving over the last years, but to attract investment, foreign investors have a choice to make. If one country has more onerous conditions than another, then investment will stay away.
<div id="attachment_144" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-144" class="size-large wp-image-144" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dryport_5-1024x655.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="303" />Mutare Dry Port, Charles Tawazadza</div>
“No country should make it too difficult for investors if they want to attract money. In Zimbabwe, companies that have been operating are caught between a rock and a hard place. They are already under immense pressures, and facing major changes.”
Back in Mutare, Tawazadza has plans to expand and turn his company into a $10 million asset. For a man in the cargo business, with a name that means filling up, there is no turning back or thought of unloading his new business.

Tag: Foreign Trade

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The Silky Entrepreneur Who Made Kagame Laugh

51% Or Our Children Will Spit On Our Graves