When former Ugandan president, Idi Amin, gave Asians a 90-day ultimatum to get out of the country in August 1972, he sparked a desperate fight for life for more than 60,000 people.
Some, who feared Amin’s brutality, had nowhere to run. Their bodies were found in the waters of the Nile.
Hitherto happy families fretted as they sought survival. Among them was a Ugandan Indian retailer’s family that took flight leaving behind, in the midst of panic and confusion, a 16-year-old son.
This vulnerable teenager was Sudhir Ruparelia.
More than 40 years on from this tearful parting, Sudhir is ranked by FORBES as the 24th wealthiest person in Africa with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. His is a remarkable story of hard work and endurance.
In an interview at his plush office chambers, in the heart of Kampala, Sudhir recalls how staying behind didn’t bother him when his family fled to Britain.
“It was an awful moment for the Asian community. You couldn’t predict what was to happen to you the next day. But I convinced my parents to leave me behind on the promise that I would join them later,” he says.
Sudhir’s Ugandan-born parents had established a shop and gas station in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park in western Uganda. They ran it for years.
The bravery and tenacity that that helped Sudhir survive and prosper amid chaos can be traced back to his childhood.
Sudhir studied in schools that were far away from the wildlife park where his parents ran their business. This meant he traveled long distances alone.
He cadged lifts on trucks ferrying traders. The trucks would leave the bush loaded with fish and salt and return packed with merchandise. Although the East African railway service was booming at that time, Sudhir says it was only for the rich.
At school, there was no communication with his parents until the holidays.
This forged a hard edge to Sudhir. All he wanted from his departing family was money to survive. His wish was granted.
For six weeks, Sudhir ran riot with his friends.
“We had a lot of money to party and drink. The security personnel occasionally stopped us but we always sweet-talked them into releasing us,” he says.
His moment of truth came when intelligence men arrested one of his friends. They wanted to extort money.
“Once he was released, we all decided to leave since the city was also getting desolate. There were just about 100 Asians left,” says Sudhir.
There was nothing left, but to flee.
Sudhir landed alone in London and didn’t even know where to find his parents. Together with other exiles, he was checked into a refugee camp. On the second day, he set out to find friends in Finchley Central. He found eight of them living in a two-roomed house. He never returned to the camp.
After five weeks in London, Sudhir found his family, but only to tell them that he wasn’t content with his refugee status and that he was moving on. He headed to Birmingham and Manchester where there were jobs that could promise permanency.
Sudhir tried to get work at Ford Motor Company but was thwarted by a union closed shop. He moved to Ilford, in northeast London, where he found a job with a company that made test tubes for laboratories. He handled red-hot wax in making centimeter markings on test tubes.
“This was the most sickening job in the entire factory. I barely had any protection and the heat was unbearable. No wonder I worked for only five months and moved back to Finchley Central,” says Sudhir.
Next, he tried to join the Royal Air Force (RAF). He passed the tests and was on the verge of signing for five years.
The problem was he was a minor and needed the consent of his parents. His mother declined. Her idea of the military had been tainted by the cruelty she had witnessed by the Ugandan army. Sudhir’s father differed but the mother held sway.
The RAF offered education. Sudhir hoped for academic success, but it was not to be.
Next, came a string of lowly jobs leading to a supermarket where he worked hard and bought a car. He used it as a cab at the weekends for extra cash. At the same time, he enrolled at a college for A-level studies, majoring in economics and accounts. He completed his studies and worked for a number of companies.
His wife, Jyotsna, with whom he worked at the supermarket, advised him to concentrate on one business. When they got married, Sudhir ventured into real estate in London. He bought properties, renovated them and sold for a profit.
Through this time, Sudhir had an uncle who had stayed behind in Uganda. He kept the link with home.
In February 1985, Sudhir returned to Uganda, aged 29, with $25,000 he earned through real estate deals in London. Due to unrest, Uganda was hit by foreign exchange shortages that caused the decline of the Ugandan shilling (Ush) to a low in 1985 of Ush600 to $1.
Sudhir says he kept a low profile for over a year to allow him time to study and understand the ruined economy.
In December 1986, Sudhir opened a wholesale store, in Kampala’s central business district, dealing in imported beer, salt and wine. The civil war left the breweries of Uganda in ruins.
This made it lucrative to import beer, with household goods, from Kenya. Sudhir positioned himself as a channel between importers and retailers. He became a trusted business partner to the importers, who supplied him the items on credit and claimed payments after a couple of days, to accelerate returns. He ran the system effectively and set up the first solid distribution structure in Kampala.
“While in London, the strongest trait I learnt was being disciplined. I ensured that the suppliers’ money was always readily available as agreed,” he says.
After just three months, he became the number one dealer in imported beer in Kampala.
Armed with a sound supply chain, Sudhir wasted no time in elevating himself to importer. This required piles of foreign exchange. So, he started a currency exchange service, which was another untapped market in Uganda.
Though the sector operated informally, the demand was overwhelming. Sudhir earned $10,000 in profit every day. He invested part of this money in prime properties in Kampala.
In 1990, the government moved in with a policy to regulate forex businesses, which had mushroomed. Sudhir’s Crane Forex bureau became the first to be licensed in the country. This catapulted him beyond his wildest dreams. In just six months, Sudhir says, he was making more money than the commercial banks.
He itched to grow his financial services empire and in 1995 created Crane Bank with $1 million.
Part of his frustration, was the way commercial banks operated as if they were doing everyone a favor. The charges were high and the choice limited. Sudhir’s came up with a motto for his new bank: Serving To Grow And Growing To Serve.
He lowered bank charges, extended banking hours; becoming the first to operate to 5PM and on Saturdays. He also cut red tape.
Today, Crane Bank is worth $120 million in capital and has 38 branches across the country. The country’s second largest commercial bank was voted Bank of the Year Uganda in 2009 and also won the Banker Of The Year award in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 by the Financial Times in London—where Sudhir’s working life began.
In 2011, the bank posted a 32.3% increment in profit, before tax, rising to Ush90.23 billion ($37 million) from Ush68.19 billion ($28 million) in 2010.
“We are currently about 35 million people in Uganda. Only three and a half million live in Kampala. The rest of the population is in the countryside. That has guided our philosophy of opening more branches up country,” says Sudhir.
His plan is to open 10 branches a year for the next three to four years, with the hope of expanding into Rwanda in March this year, followed by South Sudan.
In his office, Sudhir’s wide collection of awards is impressive. He has won almost of the top investment awards in Uganda, including the Presidential Export Award for 2002, 2006, 2005 and 2009. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Law in Business from the Uganda Pentecostal University for his investments in the Ugandan economy.
A family man, with two daughters and a son, Sudhir’s investments are run under the umbrella of Ruparelia Group of Companies, which also holds high value assets in the property development and management, insurance, education, media and hotel sectors.
Through his floriculture company, Rosebud Ltd, Sudhir has been exporting 13 million roses to Europe a month earning him a profit of $5 million per year. Production is set to increase once he acquires a planned 200 additional hectares. He will effectively produce one and a half million stems a day, creating 7,000 jobs and projected returns worth $95 to 100 million per year.
It hasn’t been all rosy at Uganda’s largest flower exporting farm though. The firm was cited in alleged environmental degradation. The National Association of Professional Environmentalists have accused Rosebud of polluting the Lutembe wetland, on the shores of Lake Victoria, with pesticide and fertilizer effluents, according to FORBES.
However, the National Environment Management Authority, a semi-autonomous institution and principal agency in Uganda charged with the responsibility of coordinating, monitoring, regulating and supervising environmental management in the country, says it has found no fault with Rosebud.
“We licensed Rosebud in 2004 with well stipulated guidelines to follow in safeguarding the environment. We have been monitoring their operations and have no queries save for the wrong perception of some members of the public,” says the authority’s executive director, Tom Okia Okurut.
Sudhir, who is hesitant to delve deeper into the matter because it is before a court, says his plans have the blessing of the environmental regulator.
Last year, residents tried to block the road leading to the farm in protesting the expansion plans. Through his lawyers, Sudhir sought a court injunction to have the development continue.
The Ugandan parliamentary committee on natural resources also instituted investigations into the matter but the speaker halted the proceedings citing sub judice. The real estate business is simpler.
Through his estate holding company, Meera Investments—named after his first daughter—Sudhir owns at least 300 residential and commercial properties in Uganda, from Crane Chambers in the central business district, to scores of apartment blocks, shopping centers, office buildings and tracts of valuable land. He estimates his rent is around $600 million a year from his real estate.
His five-star Speke Resort and Conference Centre, situated on 75 acres, by the shores of Lake Victoria near Kampala, played host to the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which drew 59 leaders. Built for the Commonwealth meeting, the resort has 780 rooms, 10 conference rooms, a 1,000-seat ballroom and nine meeting rooms that can accommodate groups ranging from 10 to 300 people. It also has Uganda’s only Olympic size swimming pool, an equestrian center and a host of bars and restaurants.
The plush hotel, worth around $165 million, caught the eye of the late Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi, who tried to buy it for $120 million. Sudhir turned him down.
His other assets include Speke Hotel, Kabira Country Club and Speke apartments, all high-end facilities in prime zones of Kampala and worth millions of dollars.
Sudhir also bought Victoria University from Edulink Holdings Ltd to add to his educational institutions portfolio already comprising of Kampala International School Uganda (KISU) and Kampala Parents’ School. The institutions are worth more than $40 million.
Asked what guides his investment, Sudhir says it is instinctive risk taking rather than feasibility studies.
“In Africa, feasibility studies are a waste of time. It’s about ability to see opportunity and take it up. If you did feasibility studies for a country like Uganda, you would never do anything,” he says.
Sudhir, the man who drove a cab for pennies and turned down Gaddafi, can never be accused of shrinking from a challenge.

The Man Who Earns  $600 Million A Year In Rent

A cold front is sweeping over Addis Ababa from the Eucalyptus-dotted Entoto mountain range. In the gloom of dawn, I shiver and look out from my hotel window at the derelict shell of a half-finished tower block. As usual I am awake as the early traffic noise begins. Despite the gray pallor of the horizon, I set out and take a morning run across the rutted steps of Meskel Square—my feet splashing in rust-colored potholes.
As the shadows lift on the downtown plaza, a more forgiving light gradually reveals hundreds of young athletes limbering up in the drizzle. I know my limits. I am a mere mortal compared to even the least talented of these local runners—most of whom will finish 30 kilometers in a round trip—a day. Rising at 4AM and running between 5AM and 7AM, with their eye on the Olympic dream, this is their solemn and stark ritual seven days a week. It will take the most dedicated years to let it go.
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I may be a stranger in their midst but I know something of their story. I investigated the plight of Ethiopia’s female athletes in 2008. For them, running represented not only a long shot at riches but an opportunity to escape the blight of child marriage which is still common in far-flung rural areas. The stipends paid to the most talented athletes by local associations also ensured the track was a small source of income in a landscape where jobs for young women were, like gold medals, too often beyond reach.
Today, I notice the warring crowds of female athletes, jostling for position along the concrete terraces that line the square, have thinned out.
“More and more are going to college. They all want to work for Western firms setting up shop here,” my driver scornfully tells me.
I have arrived back in Addis to investigate Ethiopia’s thriving leather export industry just as the Swedish retail giant, H&amp;M, reportedly enters the local market with their first small manufacturing hubs in Africa on the outskirts of the city. Other Western firms, notably the British supermarket giant, Tesco, and the ubiquitous Walmart, are also now, according to local newspapers, manufacturing goods here for the first time. This is welcome news in many ways. I know from experience that jobs in the retail sector fill a vital role employing women—although, as recent history in Asia shows us, it is a sector that does not necessarily empower them.
The garment industry and I have had a combative relationship. While a foreign correspondent based in India, I uncovered children in the supply chain of Gap Inc, prompting relentless international headlines and hurtling me into a campaign to expose abundant retail wrongdoing among other Western manufacturers in unimaginable sweatshops from Karachi to Dhaka and Colombo.
It was an issue I couldn’t even stay away from when I first moved to Africa after I exposed suppliers to both Levi’s and Gap, in the tiny kingdom of Lesotho, who were dumping dangerous garment waste and leaking toxic dyes into the heart of an impoverished HIV-ravaged community. An exposé made all the more startling by the fact that the Gap supplier in question was producing clothing for Product Red—an enterprise entirely designed to help the world’s poorest people.
As a consequence, I find myself sitting in an Addis café reading local headlines heralding the creation of garment manufacturing hubs in Africa with both hope and trepidation.
H&amp;M’s decision to look towards Ethiopia as a new low-cost country to produce clothing does not come as a surprise. After all, it is not a newcomer to the textile and garment industry. The first garment factories in the country were built in 1939, during the fascist Italian occupation.
Africa also has a history of production in the sector. Few Western shoppers realize that Madagascan textile factories continue to make clothes for Inditex, the parent company of Zara, and once did so for Gap Inc as well as other major Western retailers. Tunisia and Morocco has been furnishing high street shelves for decades.
But H&amp;M’s decision to move into Ethiopia has captured the attention of many in the garment trade. It comes at a time when many retailers are relying too heavily on nations like Bangladesh for clothing production—a place where many supply chains are at breaking point. Like other foreign firms, H&amp;M, widely seen as an industry leader, inevitably sees Ethiopia as an opportunity to expand its sourcing footprint in Africa, which could come to represent a major consumer market in itself, and not part of a bigger plan to replace its commitment to production in Asia.
But Asia is causing many retailers serious problems. In Bangladesh, sustainability and a series of deadly factory fires has led to international condemnation of the garment industry. The shelf life of China, at least as a source of cheaply manufactured clothing, also appears to be diminishing. According to the research firm, Sanford C. Bernstein, individual garments manufactured in Ethiopia were half the cost of those in China as of 2011.
The Ethiopian government wants to transform its textile and garment industry and has set an ambitious target of $1 billion in textile exports by 2016. In order to achieve this, it is bringing in foreign investors to modernize machines and factories. Other countries like Kenya, Ghana and Uganda are following suit. Led by commitments by firms such as H&amp;M, the garment industry could partly help such nations achieve the goal of moving from primarily agricultural economies to industrial.
Few in the West realize that Ethiopia is the second-most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated population approaching 92 million. According to the United States Census Bureau, in less than 40 years, Ethiopia’s population will more than triple to 278 million. In perspective, in 1967, the population was just 23.5 million.
But it is also a youthful demographic. Half of all Ethiopians today are between the ages of 15 and 24. Yet according to a 2012 US Agency For International Development study, Ethiopia has one of the highest urban youth unemployment rates in the world at 50%. In a nutshell, Ethiopia, like all African nations, needs manufacturing hubs to deliver jobs to young people and in particular, young women.
In my opinion, for major players like H&amp;M and Walmart, the country also offers the opportunity to learn from the mistakes made by the garment industry as a whole in Asia. Shaping sub-Saharan nations like Ethiopia into retail manufacturing hubs offers Western retailers the chance to wipe the slate clean and to work harder to help local suppliers avoid supply chain exploitation and sustainability issues. Above all it could represent a chance for retailers to offer consumers and stakeholders more transparent insight into their supply chains.
But there is already a flaw in this ideal. Today, the sub-Saharan Africa clothing industry is challenged by the fact that it is only partly African-owned. The clothing industries in Lesotho and Swaziland are in fact owned by Taiwanese consortiums. Similarly, in Kenya and Ethiopia, much of the industry is controlled by Indian and even Mauritian investment. Before it even grows to a recognizable sector, sub-contracting already shapes much of the industry in Africa—as does the inevitable out-sourcing of profits from local operations.
Shane Godfrey, a senior researcher in the Labor and Enterprise Project at the University of Cape Town, recently claimed that many of the garment factories in Africa are part of a triangular manufacturing strategy. So, despite often being very large operations, they do little more than assemble garments made in other nations. In the industry, he claims, they are known as caravan factories that can be easily packed up and moved elsewhere.
Godfrey’s argument is simple. He claims that that while foreign investment should be retained and encouraged, there also needs to be more stringent requirements for skills transfer so that locally-owned manufacturing capacity can develop. Controversial perhaps but the argument that Indian factories in the heart of Ethiopia will, inevitably, be less engaged in emancipating the local population and more engaged in taking out profit is hard to ignore.
Major Western retailers should not think about building schools or investing in clinics but framing corporate social responsibility investments around the training of young women to work in the garment sector and ultimately assisting Ethiopians themselves to create businesses that contribute and profit from the promising retail economy. Simplistically speaking, these firms should also keep a tighter hold on sustainability issues in far flung production hubs, such as the disposal of garment waste, the use of water during dry spells and the application of dyes.
In recent years, my own thought processes, as the outsider trying to encourage change in the garment industry, has evolved with reason and deeper understanding.
I strongly believe that Africa needs to become a manufacturing hub in sectors like retail to capitalize on the youth dividend of nations like Ethiopia. But there also needs to be more social responsibility from major manufacturers, who have been part of problematic supply chains in Asia and are now eyeing Africa as the next source of cheap clothing.
H&amp;M, now the second biggest retailer in the world, was the first company to sign a Europe-led safety pact for Bangladesh garment factories after the collapse of the factory in Rana Plaza. This despite the fact the firm had no suppliers in the building. Helena Helmersson, the firm’s global head of sustainability, has also urged Bangladesh and Cambodia to raise the minimum wage and revise it annually. Such commitments at the outset of any involvement in Africa should be expected.
Underlying this entire issue, the dialogue between the stakeholders involved in these supply chains also needs to be more open, honest and robust. The NGOs, the CEOs, the grassroots communities and the regional and national governments all need to be involved from the outset as Africa begins to process and build goods for the West and we all need to discard the distrust we have of each other and learn from the terrible mistakes made in the sweatshops of Dhaka and Delhi.

Investment Or Exploitation?

The sun was unusually hot as guests enjoyed a sumptuous lunch in Diani, the sprawling coastal town in Mombasa, known for its beaches and coral reefs. Lunch time in Diani in February could almost be a scene from paradise—the wide blue Indian Ocean lapping against a pristine beach; European tourists, escaping freezing temperatures back home, sunbathing lazily.
The guests from Nairobi clearly knew their way around. Dressed in smart casuals and resisting the urge to pull off their shirts to catch a welcome breeze, they sighed with relief as they walked into the air-conditioned five-star hotel.
Among them was Atul Shah, the managing director of Nakumatt Holdings, the family-owned company that runs Kenya’s largest retail chain. With a number of his managers, he was on a mission: to supervise construction of a new Nakumatt store in Diani. They talked politics and did the sums for the new investment.
When his phone rang Atul Shah, like businessmen do, excused himself and stepped a few yards away. From a distance, witnesses say, you could see his face turn ashen and panic set in on what was to be his worst day. The caller with bad news was the manager of the downtown branch in the heart of Nairobi.
“It sounded like a dream,” says Shah. “Then I saw it on TV.”
<div id="attachment_524" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-524" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-524" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RTR242EP-1024x608.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="281" />Kenya&#8217;s President Mwai Kibaki (C) and Police Commissioner Hussein Ali walk past the burnt-down Nakumatt supermarket in downtown Nairobi, January 30, 2009. At least 22 people died and more than two dozen more were missing after a fire destroyed a supermarket in downtown Nairobi two days ago. REUTERS/Stringer (KENYA)</div>
It was a day that would haunt the owner of Nakumatt for the rest of his life. With 36 stores spread across the region, Nakumatt is the big brother of retail in East Africa. The majority of its stores, 30, are in Kenya, three are in Uganda, two in Rwanda and one in Tanzania, giving it a 15% market share of a crowded retail market where the big five supermarkets control over 80%. In the world of retail where numbers count for much, big is beautiful. Nakumatt has taken this maxim seriously and dotted the big towns with its elephant symbols. Nairobi is Nakumatt’s hub, with more than 10 stores tapping billions of shillings in disposable income from the rising middle class.
On this day, January 28, 2009, as workers broke for lunch, one of its city center branches went up in flames, turning stock and assets, worth Ksh250 million, to ashes. Eighteen shoppers and staff, perished in the inferno.
Shah went into crisis mode. He cancelled his three-day tour of Mombasa to fly back to Nairobi to handle the disaster, but all planes were fully booked that day. He had to manage the situation on the phone, with eyes glued to a TV, until the following day.
“We had lots of communication with my managers in Nairobi. We were all confused and focus was on rescue efforts to save lives. We knew we would overcome the fire but the loss of human lives is what broke us down. We had to do whatever it takes to minimize deaths.”
The blaze took fire fighters from the Nairobi City Council four days to contain. The flames were fed by exploding gas tanks.
“The first day was total confusion. On the second day we established a disaster team to manage the situation. The government also created its own team. We worked together well to make sure the families of those people who perished were taken care of. I was part of the team and was on the ground for four days,” says Shah.
The loss was even more painful as it came just a month after the retail chain’s other branch was flattened by bulldozers to clear the way for the construction of the Thika super highway through Nairobi. In the process, the company was caught unaware and lost most of its stock to looters.
Shah sets his loss from the fire at Ksh400-250 million in stock and Ksh150 million in furniture and other assets. To make matters worse, the supermarket management was accused of locking shoppers in the supermarket in the shop when the fire alarm went off to prevent them from running away with unpaid goods, but Atul denies this charge.
“There were all manner of accusations from sabotage to arson. But it emerged it was Kenya Power to blame because it had had power outages. It’s unfortunate that it’s us who were affected,” Shah said.
What most of the accusers did not know is that Nakumatt had three fire marshals at the branch, one of whom sadly died in the fire as he tried to rescue customers. When the fire broke out, the man in his thirties swung into action to do what he was trained to do. He lunged into the smoke to rescue one person; a second time to save another soul; the third time the brave fire marshal did not return.
“It surprised us because the fire happened just two weeks after we had undergone a thorough fire audit by the Nairobi City Council. The company has since then enhanced its fire safety by training staff on emergency response and employing experts to beef up its compliance above the industry benchmarks. The quick-spreading fire was blamed on the presence of LPG gas cylinders and now the government has decreed all supermarkets not to stock cooking gas on their premises.”
Shah says Nakumatt spent Ksh40-50 million in managing the situation, including financing forensic tests to identify those who died in the fire and compensating those who lost their loved ones.
To make a bad situation worse, Kenyans looking to make a quick buck faked the deaths of their relatives in the fire. Nakumatt’s forensic analysis has already discovered three fake claims and has flagged two more for investigation.
“Some people claimed they lost relatives who had come to shop but produced death certificates of people who died a long time ago. Only 18 have been found to be genuine.”
The disaster did not end with the clearing of the ashes. The fire scared many shoppers and it took them months to come back to Nakumatt.
These were sad days for the company founded in 1978 by Shah’s father in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru. From a single shop dealing in mattresses; Nakumatt, short for Nakuru Mattresses, now has an annual turnover of $500 million. The first supermarket opened in 1982 and the company employs 5,100 workers.
Despite the setbacks, Shah is still betting on finding new markets.
“The retail market has opportunities. Organized retail is growing and especially with government recognition, the market space is expanding.”
In his office, on the wall facing him is a quote by Haku Shah, his father, which says: “In a day when you don’t come across any problem, you can be sure that you are traveling on the wrong path.”
These words sustained Shah through his worst day—January 28, 2009—a tragic day that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Tag: Supermarket

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Man Who Earns $600 Million A Year In Rent

Investment Or Exploitation?

Trial By Fire