Residence Kampala, Uganda Years active 1987 - present | Nationality Ugandan Alma mater Makerere University | |
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Born 1976 (age 40–41) Sudan Occupation Businessman, entrepreneur, investor | ||
Mohammed Hamid (born in 1976) is a Ugandan business magnate and investor. He is the chairman and majority shareholder in the companies of the Aya Group.
According to Forbes in 2015, he was the second richest African under 40, after Tanzanian multi-millionaire Mohammed Dewji.
Background
Ruparelia was born in the Sudan circa 1976. In 1987, he traveled to Uganda for the first time to visit his elder brother, Mohammed El Hamid, who operated a commodity trading business called Pan Afric Impe. He fell in love with the country and stayed.
The younger Mohammed worked with his elder brother until the early 1990s when he started his first company Pan Afric Commodities, also a commodities trading business. Later, he bough a milling machine from Premiere Mills, one of the companies owned by businessman Sudhir Ruparelia. In 1997, he bought a 15 acres (6.1 ha) piece of land in Kawempe, where he relocated the machinery and started milling wheat. Later he bought more mills and started baking bread and confectioneries.
Later, he started a trucking business, FIFI Transport Uganda Limited, which is "a leading hauler in the East and Central African region", with a fleet of more than 3,000 Mercedes-Benz Actros trucks. One of his companies, Aya Investments, is the developer of the Kampala Hilton Hotel, under construction since 2006.