The Recipe for Transforming Tanzania into an Agribusiness Powerhouse

Globe-trotting billionaire Mo Dewji made a fortune in East Africa selling palm oil, rope, and soda. 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. “This is larger than Tanzania: a success here could have implications for the continent as a whole,” says Margaret McMillan, an economics professor at Tufts University who studies economic development in East Africa, has lived in Tanzania and heard Dewji make his agribusiness pitch at a recent conference. “If he could use it as a flagship to show how [large-scale farming] can be done successfully, that would be amazing.”

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