Mohammed “Mo” Dewji Net Worth

• Mohammed Dewji is the CEO of METL, a Tanzanian conglomerate founded by his father in the 1970s.
• METL is active in textile manufacturing, flour milling, beverages and edible oils in eastern, southern and central Africa.
• In additional to Tanzania, METL operates in 10 African countries including Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya.
• Dewji, Tanzania's only billionaire, signed the Giving Pledge in 2016, promising to donate at least half his fortune to philanthropic causes

Mohammed "Mo" Gulamabbas Dewji (born 8 May 1975) is a Tanzanian billionaire businessman and former politician. He is the owner of MeTL Group, a Tanzanian conglomerate founded by his grandmother, developed by his father in the 1970s. Dewji served as Member of the Tanzanian Parliament for Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) from 2005 to 2015 for his home town of Singida. As of October 2024, Dewji has an estimated net worth of US$1.8 billion, Africa's 17th richest person and youngest billionaire. Dewji was the first Tanzanian on the cover of Forbes magazine, in 2013.

Dewji was born in Singida. He is the second of six children of Gulamabbas Dewji and Zubeda Dewji. They are Twelver Shias whose ancestors left Gujarat, India in the late 1800s to become traders in East Africa. When Dewji was born, the family was still of modest means; Dewji was born with the help of a neighbouring midwife in a house built from sand and mud. Dewji attested that he almost died at birth due to having the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, a condition known as nuchal cord. By the time Dewji started school, his father had built a family shop into a thriving import-export company.

Dewji received his primary education in Arusha at the Arusha Primary School and continued his secondary education at the International School of Tanganyika (IST) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

In 1992 his father enrolled him at the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy in Orlando, Florida, where Dewji also attended Trinity Preparatory School for 11th grade. Dewji then moved for his last and final year of high school to Saddle Brook High School in Saddle Brook, New Jersey.

Dewji attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in international business and finance and a minor in theology.

Career

(Business)

Upon graduation from university, Dewji returned home and assumed the management of Mohammed Enterprises Tanzania Limited (MeTL), a commodities trading business founded by his grandmother, according to his recent instagram video. After two years of working with the company, he became chief financial officer (CFO) at MeTL. In the early 2000s, when the Tanzanian government privatized loss-making companies, he acquired them inexpensively and turned them into profit centers by trimming personnel expenses. MeTL Group of Companies is the largest privately owned conglomerate in Tanzania.

Dewji is responsible for increasing MeTL's revenues from $30 million to over $1.5 billion between 1999 and 2018. MeTL Group has investments in manufacturing, Agriculture, trading, finance, mobile telephony, insurance, real estate, transport and logistics, and food and beverages. The group conducts business in 11 countries and employs over 28,000 people with the aim to target over 100,000 people by 2021. MeTL's operations contribute ~3.5% of Tanzania's GDP.

According to Forbes, Dewji has an estimated net worth of US$2.1 billion (2026), and is the 17th richest person in Africa^[17] and Africa's youngest billionaire (2018). His wealth is reportedly managed by Zaoui & Co. and Mohammed Abrar Asif of HFPCG. He was the first Tanzanian on the cover of Forbes magazine, in 2013 and has appeared on three occasions. Forbes Africa recognized Dewji as their Person of the Year in 2015.

Politics

Former President of Tanzania, H.E. Jakaya Kikwete and Mohammed Dewji during a political rally in 2010.

In 2000, Tanzania hosted its second multiparty elections where Dewji, at the age of 25 competed to become the Member of Parliament (MP) for Singida Urban. Despite winning the preliminary votes for the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) with an overwhelming majority, Dewji was deemed too young to hold the parliamentary seat.

Tanzania held its third multi-party elections in October 2005 and Dewji stood for the parliamentary seat again and was chosen by CCM to stand as a candidate for Singida Urban. In the general election he won with 90% of the votes and was sworn in as an MP for Singida Urban constituency on 29 December 2005. Dewji served for ten years before resigning from politics in October 2015.

Now Dewji wants to grow his agribusiness empire by orders of magnitude. He is seeking to invest $250 million, including $100 million of his own capital, to buy and mechanize 100,000 hectares of farmland in Tanzania. MeTL would use the crops to feed its own businesses, then sell the surpluses to other Tanzanian firms, African countries and even European customers. Dewji says this “vision” came to him in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as soaring food and fertilizer prices worsened conditions of poverty and malnutrition in Africa.

Agriculture accounts for one-third of Tanzania’s annual GDP (of $75 billion), but roughly 90% of that farming is done by subsistence farmers tilling less than 5 hectares of land each. As a result, food insecurity in Tanzania is widespread: Over 30% of children are stunted, and 13 million Tanzanians live in extreme poverty, while “many others live just above the poverty line,” according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. That’s despite Tanzania being the second biggest receiver of foreign aid in Sub-Saharan Africa (behind only Ethiopia) between 1990 to 2010, receiving $26.85 billion. One of those aid suppliers, the World Bank, acknowledges that Tanzania “still faces stubbornly high levels of poverty, in part as a result of dependence on low productivity agriculture.”