Who is Mohammed Hamid? Flash Uganda Media looks at his biography, age, wife, family, tribe, achievements, and relationship with Hamid Junior, Mohammed El Hamid, Pan Afric Impex, Aya Mohammed Trade, Aya Investments, Pearl of Africa Hotel, USPA accolade, and the early life and education of the Aya Group’s owner.
Mohammed Hamid is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, businessman and investor in Uganda.
He is the Aya Group’s owner and chairman of the executive board of directors.
Mohammed Hamid is the second wealthiest person in Uganda, with an estimated net worth of USD $1.259 billion.
Early Life and Education
Mohammed Hamid was born in 1976 in Wau, a city in northeastern South Sudan on the Jur River’s western bank that serves as the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal.
He first visited Uganda in 1987 to see his elder brother, Mohammed El Hamid, who ran a commodity trading company named Pan Afric Impex.
He had recently graduated from high school in Sudan and intended to study in the United States. However, he fell in love with Uganda on his visit and decided to enrol in Makerere University instead.
He has since gained Ugandan citizenship.
Mohammed Hamid lives happily with two wives under one roof. His two wives reside in a massive two-story mansion in Kololo, valued at $4 million (about Shs10 billion).
Hamid has many children, the first of whom is a student at Washington University, while the second, Fifi, is still in high school.
Career and Professional Work Experience
The younger Mohammed worked alongside his elder brother until the early 1990s when he founded his first company, Pan Afric Commodities, which also traded commodities.
He had borrowed money from his brother and used his personal savings to start importing wheat flour, juice, sugar, rice, beans, vehicle tyres, biscuits, wheat flour, and other commodities with a high profit margin.
Later, in 1998, he purchased milling equipment from Premiere Mills, a company owned by industrialist Sudhir Ruparelia.
Rather than importing wheat flour with a six-month shelf life, he opted to buy wheat grain with a two-year shelf life and process it into wheat flour to generate a good profit.
In 1997, Hamid purchased a 15-acre (6.1-hectare) plot of land in Kawempe, a Kampala suburb, where he then transferred the machinery and began milling wheat.
Hamid approached the Export Import Bank in 2000 for a loan to establish additional milling facilities. He used his resources to purchase further milling machinery from Italy and set up two more milling factories.
He realized that the flour he produced in his mills could be used to create biscuits, bread, and other baked products, so he launched another business manufacturing bread and confectioneries.
As the milling business expanded, Mohammed realized that they were paying exorbitant fees to haulage companies to carry commodities to distributors and retail outlets throughout Uganda.
As a result, he decided to start his own transportation company. He purchased 100 trucks and founded FIFI Transport Uganda Limited, which has now been renamed Panafric Transport and is now a significant transporter in the East and Central African region.
The transportation company presently has a fleet of over 3,000 Mercedes-Benz Actros trucks that can handle containerized and bagged freight. They also have hundreds of heavy-duty Scania and MAN prime movers and semi-trailers in their fleet.
Mohammed Hamid also operates a mining company that scouts for gold and has licences in several places.
One of his firms, Aya Investments, is the developer of the Pearl of Africa Hotel, which opened in 2017 and is managed by Hilton.
Mohammed also controls Aya Mohammed Trade, a trading company in Dubai that deals in general commerce across the Middle East and Africa, as well as a real estate firm in Manhattan, New York, USA, that deals in both residential and commercial properties.
Achievements and Awards
Mohammed Hamid is a well-known and successful entrepreneur in Uganda. He is the founder of one of Uganda’s largest privately held corporations.
He is the Chairman and Founder of Aya Group, a $200 million (annual revenue) conglomerate with milling, food production, commodity trading, transportation, and hospitality holdings.
Aya Mills, one of the largest commercial milling plants in East Africa and the source of some of the region’s finest flours, adds more than $100 million to the Aya Group’s bottom line each year.
According to Forbes, Mohammed Hamid was the second-richest African under 40 in 2015, after only Tanzanian multimillionaire Mohammed Dewji.
Forbes named Hamid one of the five young African millionaires to watch in 2018.
Mohammed Hamid employs about 5,000 individuals across the Aya network of companies.
He also owns a Range Rover 2014 Vogue (Shs400 million), a Range Rover 2013 Signature (Shs300 million), a Mercedes Benz S500 (Shs350 million), a BMW 7 series (Shs250 million), and an E16 AMG 2014 (Shs700 million).
Controversies
Mohammed Hamid’s fortune has been partly attributed to his strong ties with Ugandan President Y.K. Museveni.
Mohammed Hamid’s son Hamid Junior died in Kampala in February 2023.
According to Mohammed’s family members, Hamid Junior was discovered dead in his bed in Kololo, with the cause of his death unknown.
The following day, Hamid Junior was laid to rest in a Kampala cemetery.
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