As you read this, you are probably sipping on a cup of Mukwano Tea or your breakfast omelette and or bread and if not your lunch snacks were made by any of the numerous Mukwano Group cooking oils and baking fat brands that include, Mukwano Vegetable Oil, Roki, Sunseed, Mukwano Soyabean Cooking oil and Tamu Cooking Fat.
If you are not into fried stuff, you will probably later grab a bottle of Mukwano Group’s Aqua Sipi mineral water, all the while putting on clothes, recently washed with any of Mukwano’s bar soaps, such as Mukwano Star White, Chapa Nyota, Chapa Mukwano, Mama, Mukwano Bright Soap or Nomi, their detergent powder brand.
And if your home does not use any of Mukwano Group’s 150 Eagle Rock branded industrial and plastic domestic items that range from kitchen ware, garden furniture and multipurpose crates, at least your kitchenware is washed using their Supa and Shibe multipurpose cleaning products.
Better still your children used the famous MUkwano Jelly on their skin after this morning’s shower.
And if you are into farming, you could probably have used their Shamba or Mufigo animal feeds.
Such is the legacy left behind by Mzee Amirali Karmali, the founder of the Mukwano Group, that it is said that the Group touches about 90% of Ugandan households every day. The Group also has its tentacles and impact spread, outside Uganda, to include: Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, South Sudan, DR Congo, Rwanda, MAuritius, Thailand, Switzerlad and India.
The businessman, died quietly on Wednesday evening in Fort portal, Kabarole District, according to family sources.
Persistent visionary and hardworking family
Said to have been born in the 1930s is the father to Alykhan Karmali, who now runs the family business empire that cuts across manufacturing, agriculture, logistics & supply chain, property development, banking.
The late Amirali Karmali himself, is a second generation Karmali; his father, a one Alimohamed Karmali, having landed on the East African coast around 1904 and made his way to Uganda and settled in Fort Portal in western Uganda.
It is said that his good humannaturedness it was his good relations with locals that earned Alimohamed the nickname Mukwano, which means friendship in Luganda.
Alimohamed would later start a small business which, in the 1960s, gave birth to the transport business that would be run by his son, Amirali Karmali, who later later shifted his base to Kampala.
One of the few Asians who stayed behind after Idi Amin Dada’s infamous expulsion of the Indians and the subsequent bloody rule, Mzee Karmali persevered the misrule that would follow Idi Amin’s overthrow.
It was not until, the late 1980s, after peace was restored that Mzee Amirali set up Mukwano Industries that has, according to the group website “through visionary diversification into manufacturing, agriculture, property development, logistics, supply-chain management and packaging as well as financial services” grown to become the multi-sectoral conglomerate that it is today that employs over 7,000 people.
The group is also among Uganda’s top 10 tax payers.
Some of the group’s subsidiaries, according to Wikipedia, include: • AK Transporters Uganda Limited;a fully licensed and equipped logistics and transport company with over 200 light, medium and heavy transport trucks.
- Gulf Stream Investments Limited; a bulk liquid-storage terminal within the port area of Mombasa, Kenya. The terminal can store close to 26,000 metric tonnes of vegetable oils, oil derivatives and related chemicals in dedicated tanks.
- Rwenzori Commodities Ltd; Started in January 1993, Rwenzori Commodities Ltd owns over 5,700 hectares of tea and four tea factories namely, Buzirasagama, Hiima, Munobwa and Kigumba with a capacity of 200,000 kgs of green leaf or 47,000 kgs made tea per day. The company also recently entered into a partnership with Portal Avocados, a new establishment that will be growing Hass Avocados in the vicinity of the group’s tea plantations in Fort Portal.
- Exim Bank (Uganda); a retail commercial bank jointly owned with Exim Bank (Tanzania). The bank in 2018, had assets in excess of UGX276 billion.
- Lira Maize Factory Limited; located in Lira, Lira District, Northern Uganda.
- Lira Oil Mill Limited; which produces in excess of 25,000 tons of oil annually, from sunflower and cottonseed, since 2007.
- Mukwano Agro Projects Limited; which consists of over 17,000 acres (27 sq mi) of maize, soybeans, sunflower, and simsim.
- Mukwano AK Plastics; which manufactures household and industrial plastic products.
- Mukwano Industries Limited; a manufacturer of edible oil, soaps, cleaning products, sanitary products, household and industrial plastic products, bottled water and energy drinks.
- Nationwide Properties Limited; a real-estate development company that builds commercial and residential properties. Nationwide is a joint venture between the Mukwano Group and Property Services Limited, a real estate management firm in Uganda.
- Riley Packaging Limited; the largest producer of packaging materials in East Africa, a joint venture between Mukwano Group and Raps Limited, another Ugandan company. The factory, estimated at US$13 million, is located in Mukono on the Kampala-Jinja Highway.
- Royal Palms Housing Estate; A gated residential community, located at Butabika, 9 kilometres (5.6 mi), by road, southeast of the central business district of Kampala, on the shores of Lake Victoria.