Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa is Africa’s Number 1 Tobacco man. The 73
year-old Rwandese industrialist is the founder and controlling
shareholder of Pan African Tobacco Group
(PTG), the continent’s largest indigenous manufacturer of tobacco
products.
PTG manufactures cigarettes in 9 African countries including
Nigeria, Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and
the United Arab Emirates. PTG is the most formidable competitor to the
international tobacco giants, Altria and British American Tobacco on the
continent. The company employs over 20,000 people and has annual
revenues of over $250 million. Ayabatwa has a personal fortune estimated
at about $200 million.
Ayabatwa recently spoke to me, recounting his early days in business
and his entry into the tobacco business, musing about his one failure
and highlighting the work of his charity in grooming and supporting
young African business leaders.
You had a difficult childhood experience. Your mother died when
you were 12, and you were expelled from school when you were in the 8th
grade. You later went into exile as a Rwandan refugee in Burundi. That
must have been tough. Tell me about it.
My early life experiences as a boy and young adult can be described
as “hard knocks” referring to hardship, adversity and disappointments I
experienced at tender age. After losing my mother, the church and
colonial authorities that controlled Rwanda’s education system expelled
me during my eighth grade when I was 16 years. That is how my academic
future ended prematurely. With colonial authorities dividing Rwandans on
ethnic lines of Hutu and Tutsi, and intent on discriminating against
the latter to which I belonged, I saw no future in my country. Leaving
my family behind, I went into exile as a refugee at the age of 19. That
is the background to my moving to neighboring Burundi to try my luck
there.
In 1960 you secured your first job as a clerk in the Regional Post office of Rwanda-Burundi. How was the job?
After moving to Burundi, I landed a job as a clerk/typist in the
regional Post Office that served Rwanda and Burundi. I loved my new
career and I worked very hard at it. I quickly learnt on the job and
even excelled under supportive managers and supervisors. Soon I was
training future post office officials that were to take over from the
departing colonial managers as Burundi and Rwanda were now independent
states. The Post Office gave me a strong foundation for organising and
managing people and other resources. In my determination to improve
myself, I spent most evenings at the Alliance Francaise learning French,
the dominant working language. Soon, I was proficient enough that I
began teaching French to fellow Rwandan refugees. This experience taught
me early in life the importance of community solidarity and helping
others.
At what age/year did you start your first business? What was it, and what inspired your business decision?
To understand what inspired me as a young man to go into business,
we have to go back into my career at the Post Office and what followed.
Once in the Post Office employment, another problem soon emerged. While
in Rwanda, my path to education was shut down by the colonial
administration that favoured members of the Hutu community, the route to
public sector work was slowly shut in Burundi as the country gave
preference to its indigenous nationals. These early challenges in Rwanda
and Burundi stand out for me. Refusing to be kept down, I had to
confront various forms of discrimination by colonial authorities who
prevented my pursuit of education in my native country and preference of
citizens in public sector employment in my host country.
These
realities forced me to look for other options. Venturing into the
private sector, I managed to secure a job in a petroleum-storage company
with an absentee employer. At the age of 22, I rose quickly to the
highest ranks. I had to rise to the challenge by, among other things,
strengthening my management skills that I soon put to my own use. My
savings while still in this particular employment enabled me to
experiment with own entrepreneurial ideas for the first time, buying a
pickup truck, hiring a driver, and transporting people and goods.
Give me an overview of the other businesses you started out as a young man. Which of them was the most exciting and why?
When I realised that I could support my family much more easily by
making more money as part time businessman, it made no sense holding an
8-5 job. In less than a decade in private sector employment, at 29, I
saw an opportunity to enter the business world on a full time basis,
beginning with a bakery business after quitting transport. I started
importing wheat, flour and salt.
When conflict and armed clashes along
the border with Tanzania stopped my salt imports, I found alternative
routes through and around rebel-held areas. This is how I helped to end
salt shortage in Burundi an achievement that earned me an exclusive
salt-trading license — and the moniker “King of Salt.” Which of these
businesses was most exciting? I would say each of them was exciting to
me as a young man gaining experience and understanding roles and
challenges of entrepreneurship. Each of these efforts was a building
block to gaining capacity and leadership to develop, organize and manage
an enterprise. Each venture had its own risks and profit margins — and
lessons to teach me in my formative years as an emerging businessman.
You failed in an unsuccessful gold trading business. Tell me a bit about it and what lessons did you derive from that failure?
My failure at gold trading was one of the most crucial lessons I
encountered that taught me a life-long lesson. I jumped into the trade
without adequate knowledge of it and hoping to make quick and easy
money. I lost what I put into the venture. At the time this was a tough
defeat, and as we all know failing is a tough pill to swallow. But there
is a healthier way of looking at failure; it can be the best teacher in
the sense that falling and landing on your feet so-to-speak can and
should lead to perseverance and positive mindset to life. This was my
attitude — to stand up and venture into a business that is
better-conceived and executed. I later realized that with that attitude I
was in a good company. Most successful entrepreneurs have to go through
failure before realizing success, an experience that builds confidence
whereby the so-called failure is merely a stage in the journey of
success. In this respect, failure is indeed “delay, not defeat. It is a
temporary detour, not a dead end” as someone rightly put it.
In 1974, you started importing cigarettes to Burundi from
Tanzania. I am curious – of all the business opportunities out there,
why did you settle for cigarettes? What was the attraction; what was the
opportunity?
The early 1970s is the period when I saw another opportunity, namely
the importation of cigarettes to Burundi from Tanzania. Cigarette
trading became my main focus due to keen observation – I was at this
time experimenting with various commodities that appeared to have mass
appeal, such as wheat, flour, salt and cigarettes.
By 1974, cigarettes
were out-selling other items, a push factor that made me pay attention
and eventually persuaded me in 1978 to begin manufacturing the product
locally as opposed to importing. My transition from trading to
manufacturing tobacco products was facilitated by a combination of
factors. First, importation was adversely affected by unreliability of
supply due to either poor infrastructure or political instability in the
region making trade at times difficult if not impossible. Second, I had
built an excellent relationship with Tanzanian suppliers who exposed me
to manufacturing principles and encouraged me to start my own
manufacturing venture.
At first, the possibility of manufacturing seemed
far-fetched given that making cigarettes is a highly capital-intensive
process dominated by a handful of multinational corporations. Looking
back, it was a daring step to even think about it let alone enter
manufacturing. Some people thought I was crazy to think an African could
manufacture products. But I did. I took the risk and it soon paid off,
beginning with my original Burundi enterprise soon followed by the
second venture, namely, my enterprise in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (then Zaire). In Burundi, my work was seen as a model for
delivering development and jobs to rural areas after I introduced a
growers’ program to supply my factory. Unusual events in Burundi,
however, were soon to unexpectedly turn my business upside down.
A coup
d’etat brought into power a new military ruler, Pierre Buyoya, who
nationalised my cigarette business and imprisoned me in 1987 on the
false charges that I was in partnership with the overthrown government.
After three years in prison, with help from both inside and outside that
involved a daring night-time escape, I ultimately fled to South Africa,
where I moved my family and established my corporate headquarters in
1990. Seizure of my business proved to be an immense opportunity in
that it expanded my horizon by forcing me to locate and operate in
Africa’s most developed and challenging economy — South Africa.
If I
could compete in South Africa I would succeed anywhere on our continent
and even beyond. That is how we entered the big league and became a Pan
African operation with presence in the Middle East.
What eventually happened to your business in Burundi, and have you experienced other hostile asset takeovers in Africa?
There was a happy ending in the Burundi case. The government later
reversed itself and returned my business intact which still thrives to
this day. With regards to doing business in Africa, the continent has
been conducive to my work and I am most thankful for that. I believe in
Africa and I am unreservedly committed to its social and economic
transformation. I have excellent relations with African governments and
we continuously expand where and when opportunities arise.
Case in point
is our recent investment in northern Uganda valued at $20million aimed
at increasing input supplies from within Africa. There are, however,
occasional misunderstandings, such as the recent seizure of my flagship
shopping complex, the $20million Union Trade Centre (UTC) by Rwandan
authorities. The Rwanda government falsely claims that the shopping mall
is “an abandoned property” because I, the majority shareholder, reside
outside the country.
How a modern, well-managed commercial hub in the
city centre of the Rwandan Capital, Kigali, with 81 leading businesses
operating in it, and employing over 400 workers can be classified as
“abandoned” is beyond belief. The biggest loser in this illegal and
uncompensated seizure is unfortunately the country whose leaders are in
effect telling the world that Rwanda is high risk for investors. But I
am sure even in Rwanda it is a matter of time for reason and decency to
prevail.
You’ve made an enormous amount of money in all your years of doing business. How are you giving it back?
I have recently established the Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa (TRA)
Foundation to assist me pursue my philanthropic work. The foundation
will concentrate on helping those closest to my heart: African young
people with drive and determination, who need a shot at opportunity and a
little help for overcoming the odds — those who are in a similar
situation to the one I faced as a young refugee.
I have two main goals
for this project at the outset: first, developing internship
opportunities for African students to give them the practical, hands-on
experience they need to succeed in today’s job market in engineering and
technology. Second, providing mentoring and venture capital to budding
African entrepreneurs so they can pursue their business development
goals. The countries in which we do business are a priority in this
regard. I should note that the TRA Foundation is the logical extension
of my lifelong passion to promote African education, community
development and business opportunity through philanthropic efforts,
civic work and public service. Since my early days in Burundi, investing
time and material resources in community development projects and youth
education were my passion.
More recently, between 2005 and 2012, we
provided scholarships for 84 high school students and nearly 30
university students in my native country of Rwanda. In an effort to
encourage business development, I helped establish the Rwandan Chamber
of Commerce, serving as its first chairman. I also served as chairman of
the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency and co-chairman of
the Akagera Task Force, which was the driving force behind many of
Rwanda’s economic reforms. In community development, I helped build a
housing complex with about 100 homes for returning refugees after the
1994 genocide in Rwanda, when banks and commercial agencies were not yet
operational. We presently contribute to various community improvement
initiatives especially in countries where we operate.
Whether providing
electricity to 500 families near the Nshili Kivu tea plantation in
Rwanda; donating cement to build new roads, a church and a football
stadium in Burundi; or providing water and seedlings to farmers in
Northern Uganda, I am committed to improving African lives. Through the
TRA Foundation, I plan to keep thanking the people who helped me
succeed through concrete deeds. In particular I hope to contribute to
putting creative and innovative African youngsters on their own paths to
success.
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