Sunil Vaswani is Africa’s man in Dubai. One of the biggest investors on the continent, he is a keen promoter of the opportunities for other GCC-based businesses to tap into Africa. Given such investments have made him the richest Indian in the GCC, his point is clearly proven: there is money to be made in Africa.
“I have a personal interest and passion for the continent’s progress and Dubai has been a great platform for our business interests there,” he told delegates at the Arabian Business Africa Forum in January. He added that Dubai, where his company Stallion Group is based, has become “the favourite hub for African business”.
Stallion Group’s most substantial business interests are in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, where it owns a network of cold storage facilities and automobile distribution plants and showrooms. It manages international brands including Honda, Hyundai, Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, Mahindra and Ashok Leyland across the region, as well as selling key products, such as rice and building materials, and has operations in industries as diverse as rice milling, plastics, vehicle assembly, shipping and transportation.
However, Vaswani does not sugar-coat, conceding that African countries have suffered in the past 12 months amid low commodity prices and a global economic slowdown, and that many African nations are suffering from rapid currency depreciation, falling investments, policy uncertainty and rising unemployment.
Despite that, he is forging ahead with plans to create a specialist Africa investment company to expand Stallion Group’s operations on the continent. This ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel is what has got Vaswani to where he is now. “I just never give up. If I set my mind on something, I just go for it and keep trying until I get it,” he told us in his first interview in 2015.
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