Somali Success Thread

[CaliTedesse]

I made this thread in dedication of Somalis, since I always get into arguments with other ethnics and people about Somalis. They know very little about us and the things they do know is negative. So I made this thread to keep up with all success stories or events. Please help me expand this thread and let us view this thread if getting into an argument with foreigners.

I want each of you if you join in to only to drop 1 success story or successful Somali at a time. So please don't drop many stories or successful persons into one comment. This is to keep the thread clear, because my whole purpose for this thread is to come back to it when I need it and maybe you guys can use it too.

 

[CaliTedesse]

https://www.businessdailyafrica.com...or-building/539550-3843238-1glr0iz/index.html

Hass Petroleum(Somali Company) inks Sh20b deal for 'Africa’s tallest building'
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2017 14:40

Hass Petroleum Group has signed a Sh20 billion deal with a Chinese company for the construction of Africa’s tallest building.

The China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) will construct Hass Towers, a mixed use development which will stand over 300 metres tall in Nairobi’s Upper Hill area.

Hass Towers will dwarf some of Nairobi’s skyscrapers and reach higher than South Africa’s Carlton Centre, which at 223 metres is the continent’s tallest building.

“Hass Group awarding the contract to CSCEC demonstrates a stronger growing economic partnership between the Chinese Government and the Kenyan Government,” said Hass Petroleum Group chairman Mr Abdinassir Hassan.

Construction will begin in April with the building’s completion slated for 2020.

The 67-storey Hass Towers will include office space along with a retail and entertainment complex.

It will also be the home of Nairobi’s third Hilton Hotel.

There is a Hilton Hotel in the capital’s central business district (CBD) while the Hilton Garden Inn is under construction near the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

 

[CaliTedesse]

BIG SMOKE CEO(SOMALI)




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Smoke_Burger

Big Smoke Burger expands to the Middle East

MARYAM SIDDIQI
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 27, 2014
Before people went cuckoo for cronuts, before cupcakes were hot on the scene, there were gourmet burgers. Thanks to our insatiable appetites, "better burgers," as the food industry dubs them, have gone from craze to commonplace. When we're hungry, we like it our way, with some hand-cut fries and homemade ketchup on the side.

Signature touches such as spicy chipotle mayo and local toppings like smoked Canadian cheddar initially set Toronto-based Big Smoke Burger and Mustafa Yusuf, its founder and CEO, apart from the many competitors. "The market's already saturated," Yusuf says. This hasn't stopped him from launching an international expansion of his boutique fast-casual restaurant chain, into markets as close to home as Southwestern Ontario and as far away as the Middle East.

Dan Rowe, CEO at FranSmart, the franchise development company that, over 40 months in the mid-2000s, took Five Guys Burgers & Fries from four units to an international chain with 100 locations, started courting Yusuf shortly after he opened his first shop. "It's the best burger I've ever had," Rowe says, "and it's the best franchise one, because it's such a small unit with such a high-quality product." Yusuf waited until he had perfected his model before working with Rowe (Yusuf opened one Big Smoke location per year in Toronto between 2007 and 2012). They signed an agreement in 2011 and have been actively franchising for the past 18 months.

The company's first U.S. location, in Denver, Colorado, started serving burgers last summer, and in the next few months, doors will open in a suburb of Detroit and in Manhattan's Chelsea neighbourhood. Expansion has also taken off rapidly in the Middle East. In November, 2013, a Kuwaiti location opened; in January, Big Smoke welcomed customers in Riyadh; and the first half of 2014 will see locations in Bahrain and Dubai, with second restaurants in Kuwait and Riyadh.

Born in Somalia, Yusuf, 39, lived in Abu Dhabi until age 11, when his family moved to Toronto. Yusuf says the Middle East expansion has been a positive experience: "I wouldn't change anything." And though he says that Canadians are loved in the Middle East, he admits that "knowing the culture and knowing a little bit of Arabic has helped." The Middle Eastern appetite for Western culture and cuisine has also helped: "95% of the people eating at our restaurants are Arabs," Yusuf says.

Perhaps the greatest contributor to Big Smoke's success in the Middle East is Rowe's experience in the region. He has spent the past decade building several brands in the area including Elevation Burger, a Virginia-based chain that Rowe describes as serving a "fast-food burger" versus Big Smoke's "restaurant burger," which meant his team was able to pair Yusuf with reputable local franchisees ("non-Arabs can't own businesses in the Middle East," Yusuf explains) and guide him through hurdles like the requirement for halal meat, the dearth of ready suppliers and labour issues.

"When you do business in the Middle East, all of your employees are imported. You need to bring in labour, which means you also need to house them and sort out how to get them to your restaurants to work every day," Rowe explains. "It's quite a puzzle." These added operating expenses are reflected in menu pricing, which Yusuf says is a bit higher than what Canadian customers are paying.

Yusuf has made an effort to maintain as much consistency as possible, whether in Colorado or Kuwait. His stores are equally sized, all ranging from 1,200 to 2,000 square feet; all kitchens use the same made-in-Winnipeg grill to cook the same 13 burger options and all cheeseburgers are topped with Canadian cheddar.

Aside from the menu pricing, the only significant difference found in the Middle East locations is halal beef, a legal requirement. Currently, halal beef is sourced from suppliers in Europe, the U.S. and Australia. "We're trying to promote Canadian beef and are working with suppliers," Yusuf says of the approval process that a factory must go through to be able to certify its meat as halal.

The market has changed since the mid-2000s when Rowe was growing Five Guys. "Then, basically nobody was competing with Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King. Five Guys had a very easy time standing out. Now, there are a lot of people doing high-quality products, so you've got a higher bar," he says.

Last year, Big Smoke's 10 locations dished out 900,000 burgers. Within the next two years, Yusuf's goal is to have a total of 50 locations worldwide. So, while he may think the burger market is saturated, he's still hungry.

 

[CaliTedesse]

30,634 viewsFeb 19, 2015, 01:22pm
Somali Entrepreneur Raises $100 Million For Money Transfer Startup WorldRemit

WorldRemit, a London-based online money transfer service that lets people send money to friends and family in other countries, has raised $100m in a Series B funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), with participation from existing investor Accel Partners.

WorldRemit was founded in 2010 by Ismail Ahmed, a Somali-born remittance specialist and former compliance advisor to the United Nations, after a conviction that technology could improve the international money transfer process, enhance compliance and reduce costs to the customer. WorldRemit is significantly cheaper than other major transfer services such as Western Union and Moneygram.

The new investment will allow WorldRemit to extend its existing reach of 50 send countries and 117 receive countries, and expand partnerships with Mobile Money wallets operated by telecoms companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. WorldRemit has raised a total of $140 million in the last year. In March 2014 the company received $40 million in funding from Accel Partners.

Apart from offering bank deposit and cash pick-up options, WorldRemit facilitates instant transfers to Mobile Money wallets and allows customer to send mobile airtime top-ups. More than 50% of all WorldRemit transfers to Africa are currently received as Mobile Money or mobile airtime top-up.

Ismail Ahmed

WorldRemit is growing fast. It now has more than 150 employees at its London headquarters, up from about 40 only a year ago. In December 2014, the company set up a base in Denver, Colorado, with plans to recruit more than 200 staff.
“I am delighted that TCV is joining WorldRemit in our mission to enable the seamless movement of money between people across borders. We have an amazing opportunity to shake-up a stale industry and to save our customers time and money. We are taking money transfers into the mobile age, where people send from apps and receive on Mobile Money services,” Ismail Ahmed, WorldRemit founder and CEO, said in a press release.

Meanwhile, TCV General Partner John Rosenberg said the $550 billion global remittance market is undergoing significant disruption with a clear shift to online and mobile solutions for international money transfer.

"We are delighted to partner with Ismail and the WorldRemit team, who are at the forefront in offering convenient, low-cost solutions, backed by a market leading technology platform, compliance infrastructure, and geographic footprint," Rosenberg said in a statement.

 

[CaliTedesse]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amina_Moghe_Hersi

Amina Hersi Moghe’s parents were nomads who migrated from Somalia and settled in Bungoma, Western Kenya, where she was born. Growing up as a child, she worked with her mother in setting up a hardware store before settling down in Uganda to trade soft commodities and cement. She built a fortune from there and delved into real estate. Hersi, 64, now owns some of the choicest pieces of real estate in Uganda, including the landmark Oasis Shopping mall in Kampala, and hotel Laburnam Courts. Her sugar manufacturing company, Atiak Sugar Factory, is also developing a $120 million sugar factory in Uganda’s northern region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atiak_Sugar_Factory

The Entrepreneurial Journey Of Amina Hersi Moghe The Oasis Mall Proprietor

Kenyan entrepreneur Amina Hersi Morghe was born in Bungoma, a small town in south western Kenya, about 33 kilometers from the Uganda border. She was born to Kenyan-Somali parents who owned a small shop and butchery which she helped run after school.

After completing senior four, her parents enrolled her into a one year course in elementary accounting
in the capital Nairobi. They wanted her to have the skills and knowledge to be able to run the family
business back home. When she finished her studies, a small hardware shop was opened for her and she
started trading. However, the challenge she faced was that all the hardware shops in the area sold
material in large quantities and therefore made it almost impossible for the locals who needed small
quantities to afford.

She immediately took advantage of this and started selling goods in quantities that customers desired,
she sold nails in kilograms and this made her small shop popular in the region. She was able to get more
customers and more profit. Amina made customers her friends and they were able to tell her what kind of
goods/ brands they needed and she brought exactly that. Some customers actually provided the capital
for her to purchase these items; these were more like loans without interest.

Calamity fell in the 1990’s when her business was at its peak. She lost two children in a road accident and
this was a turning point in her life. It was hard to move on from the loss. She then decided to leave
Kenya because of a need of a new environment that would distract her from the loss. She decided Uganda was
the destination. She packed her bags and came to the Pearl Of Africa

While in Uganda, she established and run one of the most successful cement and hardware companies
because of the experience she had back home. She was one of the biggest importers of the time and a few
years later, she started planning for her retirement. This however wasn’t what God had in plan for her. The 2007,
Common Wealth Heads of Government’s Meeting came knocking, there weren’t enough hotels in Kampala for the
anticipated guests and she took the risk that many weren’t able to make and joined real estate. Laburnum Courts Apartments were born.

Years after, she still thought about retirement but it looks like entrepreneurs don’t retire, it’s a lifetime
job. A friend approached her into joining the sugar production industry in Northern Uganda. She was
hesitant but later agreed to give it a thought. As you read this, Amina Hersi’s sugar factory is starting
production soon in Atiak, Amuru District Northern Uganda.

The project has provided many families with a livelihood and a chance to a better life because they are
involved in planting, weeding and harvesting sugar cane for the factory. Amina Hersi gave them following advice to the youth who were in attendance at the YE Summit where she shared her life story:

http://chano8.com/the-entrepreneurial-journey-of-amina-hersi-moghe-the-oasis-mall-proprietor/

 

[Odowa]

Let me join. This is a Somali purse designer from The Netherlands.

He managed to become neighbor of the Dutch King.

Omar Munie fled to the Netherlands without parents and now becomes the neighbor of the king
Bag designer Omar Munie (32) fled to the Netherlands without his parents from Somalia at the age of nine and now he becomes the King's neighbor

Awis (li) and Omar Munie for Noordeinde


Here is the source

https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-o...n-wordt-nu-de-buurman-van-de-koning~bc84baea/

 

[sigmund]

keep them coming

 

[CaliTedesse]

https://www.sde.co.ke/thenairobian/...tleigh-the-secret-of-somalis-business-success

Eastleigh: The secret of Somalis’ business success

Eastleigh recently hosted Firi Festival to celebrate its cultural and business diversity.

‘Little Mogadishu,’ as Eastleigh is nicknamed, owing to the largely Somali population, is an interesting study of culture and business. Besides Somalis, there are Eritreans and Ethiopians in this neighbourhood that never sleeps.

Though outsiders, these immigrants have injected into Eastleigh the do-or-die work ethic characteristic of ‘displaced communities’ and attendant reciprocal relationship built on networks and trust.

Eastleigh, Nairobi’s xanadu of commerce, boasts more shopping malls than anywhere else in Kenya, besides a 24-hour economy via its multi-billion shilling wholesale and retail enterprises.


But despite decades of living together, there are hardly any inter-marriages between the ‘foreigners’ and locals, owing to cultural orientation, religious persuasion and the insularity and herd mentality of migrants. But why are they more successful in business than locals?

The answer is simple: trust.

An illustration will do. Ten business people from, say, Central Kenya, will collectively buy air tickets for a business trip to Guangzou, China. At Sh120,000 per ticket, that comes to Sh1.2 million, of course minus accommodation and logistics escalating overheads and later cost of the goods. Why don’t these Central Kenyans just send one of them? Trust issues!

Their Somali counterparts, on the other hand, will send orders to their contact in Guangzou and pay using the informal money transfer system called Hawala. Trust sees their goods cost less due to shared costs for the logistics and economies of scale via their global and social distribution networks.

These social capital is not common among miros in Central Kenya, where lack of trust sees smallholder tea and dairy farmers selling their produce individually, yet combining, cooperative style, could yield higher returns. Lumping one and two-acre parcels into ranches could make their shambas more economically viable, but mistrust over beacons and boundaries has ensured blighting poverty takes root.

Eastleigh in 1989

Indeed, ‘telephone farming’ is a challenge to most urbanites, largely due to untrustworthy villagers, mostly screwed up relatives.

Trust is a component of culture and in his 1995 book, Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity, American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama argues that people and countries with high trust equities such as Japan, America and Germany, are economically more successful.

The existence or otherwise of trust extending beyond family members, contends Fukuyama, critically affects economic development. And that includes governments.

Those which are trusted by citizens spur economic growth. Kenyans at independence in 1963 trusted the government of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta to fight poverty, ignorance and disease. In the ensuing decade to the coffee boom of the 1970s, the economy galloped at 6.6 per cent annually, until the oil crisis of 1979 tanked things up.

In his 1990 book, Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, American journalist Blane Harden writes that though the Mzee Kenyatta administration was mired in corruption, Kenyans trusted they will get services for which they had bribed!

Did Kenyans trust the Kanu regime? Well, between 1980 and 1986, the country experienced a 1.4 per cent decline in per capita income, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund. No sector of the economy grew outside of coffee, tea and tourism. Manufacturing came to a standstill, foreign investors closed shop, while many parastatals were milked dry by incompetent charlatans. What grew the most was government: civil servants ballooned at a rate of 5.4 per cent annually
— faster than the Gross Domestic Product, according to Richard Sandbrook’s The Politics of Africa’s Economic Stagnation published in 1988.

By the time Mwai Kibaki became Kenya’s third president in 2003, the economy had stagnated at negative two per cent in annual back-peddling.

Did Kenyans trust the Kibaki administration? From a four per cent annual ascent, the economy grew to seven per cent, for the first time in over 30 years, until the post-election violence messed stuff up in 2007/2008.

Do Kenyans trust the Jubilee government? Only time will tell, but Fukuyama postulates that economic prosperity and business success cannot be adequately explained by abundance of natural resources, brilliance of intellect, or the presence of good laws and institutions. Nor is capitalist success attributable solely to the operations of rational, self-interest in free market environments. Rather, business success and economic prosperity require a culture of trust and a capacity for what he calls “spontaneous sociability,” common among Somalis in Eastleigh.

 

[CaliTedesse]

Biggest Somali Real Estate Owner in Tanzania

http://bestofsomalia.com/featured/said-amin-shamo/

Somali Excellence is not just for the educated Somali or the ones that may have become famous or rich. It is a title given to the ones that chose to believe and think big. The individuals that rose above the obstacles and achieved greatness.

In our first showcase of #Somali Excellence, The notion of Somali people being celebrated in the limelight, we’ll be covering Said Amin Shamo.

Amin Shamo lives in Dar Es Salaam as one of the biggest real estate owners in Tanzania. Since the 1970’s, his family has been running businesses in Somalia through The Shamo Group of companies.

The Shamo Group is active in several African countries as well as in the United Arab Emirates. At the helm of the group is Hon Said Amin Shamo, responsible for steering the growth of the company. In addition to being the Chairman of the Shamo Group, Hon. Shamo is also the Honorary Consul of Djibouti in Tanzania.

The Shamo Group consists of Shamo Plast Industries in United Arab Emirates, Shamo industries in Tanzania, Shamo Hotel in Somalia, Shamo Aluminum in Somalia and Shamo Industries in Zambia.

Read his interview with Man Magazine, Tanzania’s most prominent business and Lifestyle Magazine below.

The Shamo Group of companies has successful operations in Somalia, Zambia, UAE and Tanzania. Can you give us a brief background of the company from its origin to its current multi country presence?

Like many businesses, the Shamo Group had a humble beginning. The success of the group of companies is profoundly attributed to the entrepeneurial instinct of the founder, the late Abucar Amin Mohamed Shamo who ventured in the entrepreneurial world by establishing a hardware store specializing in importation and sales of building materials in 1972.

He was my eldest brother and his first shop was set up in Mogadishu, Somalia. The strong ethical foundations of the company was hence essentially laid by the founder through his leadership and hard work and in time the enterprise grew into a leading business with core activities specializing in manufacture of aluminium and glass systems, concrete roofing tiles, concrete cement pavers and PVC pipes.

You are currently the Chairman of the Shamo Group. Did you always want to run your own business?

Growing up to be an entrepeneur was an obvious preference for me. It was only cultured in me because of my family business, but I’ve always had an entrepeneurial instinct. It was hence an exciting challenge to take forward my own business and raise the Shamo Group to greater heights.

Your company has diverse interests ranging from insurance to security, hospitality and real estate, would you say diversity is essential to growing a multinational empire?

Diversification in any business simply leads to growth. The Shamo Group gradually broadened its horizons from one kind of industry to others so as to gain more ground and map Tanzania in the world by building business relations with other countries. The group diversified its operations and is currently the proud umbrella organization for the following companies:

Shamo Plast Industries
Based in Ajman – U. A. E is the producer of light and heavy-duty PVC pipes.

Shamo Hotel
Based in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Fortis Insurance Brokers Limited
Based in Dar es Salaam – Tanzania, an insurance brokers company.

Securex Security And Alarm Company
Based in Dar es Salaam – Tanzania, a well established security company.

Shamo Park House and Shamo Towers
Located in Mbezi Beach – Dar es Salaam.

 

[Pureblood]

What a beautiful thread