The Little-Known Ethiopian Billionaire

His name is Mohammed Al Amoudi. He is an Ethiopian business mogul, and one of little-known, rarely talked about Africa’s richest men. 

By most estimates, Al-Amoudi has one of the highest net worth of any African-born person in the world. 

He is so rich that at some point in 2021 Bloomberg estimated that his net worth then could buy 4.12 million troy ounces of gold and 102 million barrels of crude oil.

Just last year alone, his net worth surged remarkably reaching $8.5 billion, marking a 61.9 per cent increase in just 30 days, Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed.

Bloomberg currently ranks him 273 on the list of billionaires in the world with a net worth of $9.28 billion.

At 77, Al Amoudi has a portfolio of industrial assets spanning Ethiopia, Sweden, and Saudi Arabia, including Svenska Petroleum Exploration and Preem, Sweden’s largest oil refiner.

His investments also extend to Midroc Gold in Ethiopia, the country’s leading miner, along with investments in hotels, an oil company, and agricultural ventures in coffee and rice.

The surge in net worth is closely linked to the robust performance of his industrial assets, particularly his stake in Preem, Sweden’s major energy company, with an annual refining capacity exceeding 18 million cubic meters of crude oil.

His diverse investment portfolio, which includes assets like oil refiner Samir in Morocco and Okote Gold, contributed significantly to his expanding $8 billion fortune. He also has major holdings in cement producer Cimpor Cimentos de Portugal.

But who’s Al Amoudi?

His story will stun you. 

Unlike many rich moguls, Al Amoudi did not inherit any of his current wealth. He gained it through hard work and sweat. 

He was born in Ethiopia to a Yemeni father and Ethiopian mother in Dessie, a town in north-central Ethiopia in Amhara Region where he was raised for the most part and studied at the Addis Ababa University. 

At the age of 19, he migrated to Saudi Arabia with his brother Mauricet and became a Saudi citizen.

In Saudi Arabia, the young Al-Amoudi built a personal relationship with the Kingdom’s ruling family, which two decades later, he would use to make his first billion with a construction contract to build an underground oil storage facility.

The construction contract that cemented his fortune as a billionaire was secured in 1988 and it was a $30 billion worth contract from the Saudi government to build an underground oil storage complex.

The business tycoon eventually returned back home to Ethiopia in the mid-1980s making his initial investment in the country for which he has always had a soft spot for. 

He built a close relationship with the ruling party, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, which gave him advantage to build his business empire in the country. His investments in Ethiopia are now largely operated through MIDROC Investment Group which was created in 1994.

I first discovered Al Amoudi in 2023 at the University of Chicago when I was investigating the power play in Ethiopia between the private sector, the media and the government. I came to learn that Al Amoudi was a controlling monopoly in Ethiopia. 

Al Amoudi owns MIDROC Investment Group, reportedly the largest investment entity in Ethiopia with 41 companies spanning real estate, agriculture, hospitality, manufacturing, and mining.  

MIDROC in Ethiopia invests across agriculture and agro-processing, manufacturing, mining, trade, construction and real estate, as well hotel and tourism industries. 

He owns the largest hotels in the country such as Sheraton Hotel Ethiopia, key gold mines and an oil company, major construction licenses, coffee estates and factories, as well as rice-growing projects and land, including a 60-year concession on 10,000 hectares in the province of Gambella.

The Al Amoudi-owned Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc is currently developing up to 500,000 hectares of Ethiopian land for sugar, edible oil, and grain production. In March 2011, Saudi Star announced an investment of $2.5 billion in Ethiopian rice projects. 

Al Amoudi even owns a domestic airline known as Trans Nation Airways that very few people may have heard of. With its base at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, it operates domestic commercial and cargo flights, as well as international charter services. 

MIDROC Investment Group is a subsidiary of his major consortium Mohammed International Development Research and Organization Companies (MIDROC) International, engaged in multifaceted business ventures, operating in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the United States of America.

In Saudi Arabia, he has pledged $275 million alongside other Saudi and South Korean investors through MIDROC to help build the country’s first locally-made car, to be called Gazal-1. 

But all hasn’t been roses for the business mogul. 

In November 2017, Al Amoudi was detained by Saudi authorities in an anticorruption crackdown by the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. With the help of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, he was released in January 2019.

However, there was no information from the Saudi authorities about the reasons for his arrest or the conditions of his release. 

His European assets continued to operate on a normal basis and were unaffected by his absence, according to company statements published during his absence.

In total his businesses have a turnover of approximately $15 billion and employ over 70,000 people.