Mohammed “Mo” Dewji, Tanzania’s richest man, delivered Georgetown University’s commencement address on Friday, where he also received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from President John J. DeGioia and the Georgetown McDonough School of Business.
In his speech, Dewji mused on how the interconnectedness of the world today has rendered us even more disconnected.
“Like many parents here today, I worry about the challenges facing your generation,” he said. “Today’s world makes it easier to forget our community. New apps offer simulations of human connection, but make us feel more isolated. You can sleep five feet away from a roommate, yet still feel more distanced than two isolated villages in Tanzania.”
The billionaire called on graduating students to create a sense of purpose for the environments in which which they’ll find themselves; devote themselves to service of community; and not pursue success for vainglory or the sake of self-aggrandizement.
“So, when we get lost, how do we find the natural path back to community?,” he said. “It comes from the Jesuit phrase, outlined in Georgetown’s mission statement: Cura Personalis. Care of the Person. In Tanzania, we commonly use a similar phrase: ‘Tuko Pamoja’, meaning ‘We are together.’ We are community. No matter where I travel, from rural Tanzania, to London, to right here in D.C., I’m reminded that the values of Cura Personalis and Tuko Pamoja transcend languages, politics, religions, and cultures. The need for community is universal, because it brings responsibility and purpose to our lives. Remember, graduates, your successes are not yours alone. When we focus only on ourselves, we lose sight of our community. And, eventually, we lose sight of our most precious investment: our time with each other.”
Dewji spoke of how his personal sense of purpose and desire to uplift the lives of Tanzanians inspired his decision to return to Tanzania and join his father’s commodity trading company after studying and working in the United States. Dewji also said he was dissatisfied with merely trading food and general merchandise items, and was keen to create jobs and opportunities for Tanzanians – a move that led him to pivoting his father’s company from a trading house to an industrial behemoth.
In the past two decades, Dewji has built METL Group, his family’s company, into one of the largest homegrown industrial conglomerates in East and Central Africa, with 35,000 employees and annual revenues in the region of $2 billion. The group manufactures everything from textiles and beverages to edible oils and detergents.
METL is also one of the world’s largest farmers of sisal, owns container depots and liquid storage facilities, and has an extensive property portfolio in Tanzania. Dewji, who owns 70 percent of the company today, has a net worth that Forbes estimates at $1.5 billion.
Dewji previously served as a member of parliament for Singida-Urban in Tanzania from 2005 until his retirement in 2015. He received a BSBA from the McDonough School of Business in 1998.
