Mutaasa Kafeero: How I made my money

Born to Yusuf Kafeero and Aziiza Kengingo Rutiiti in Kyaruwuga Bongera in Kajara county in Ntungamo on August 10, 1952, Hassan Mutaasa Kafeero’s outstanding business success is a unique story of resilience, hard work, creativity and aggressiveness. He narrated his success story.

Family background

Hassan Mutaasa Kafeero’s father, Yusuf Kafeero, was a prominent businessman in Ankole, who used to trade in cattle, he would transport to Kampala and Mukono.

Mutaasa’s grandfather, Adam Mutaasa, was a warrior in the Buganda and Bunyoro war of 1885 and later fought in the Bajungute Muslim wars in 1888. He later served as a chief in Ankole Kingdom. At that time, several chiefs in Ankole were from Buganda.

Lady Zainabu, the mother of Mutaasa Kafeero’s father (Yusuf Mutaasa), was captured from Bunyoro during the wars Adam Mutaasa engaged in. Her mother was a Munyoro and her father was Turkish.

Yusuf Kafeero (Hassan Kafeero Mutaasa’s father) had 12 wives living in the same home. With them, he fathered 84 children.

“I learnt a lot from my father, especially the habit of being hardworking and being honest in business. My father had many cattle kraals and many commercial plantations of various food items,” Mutaasa testifies.

Starts business life at young age

From as early as Primary Five and Six, Mutaasa had started the life of trading to make money, something which was alien to his age-mates.

By that stage of his life, he had already become his father’s favourite child as he turned out to be his most behaved one.

Using a bicycle his father had given him as a gift for his good conduct and good academic performance, Mutaasa started using it to transport matooke to town centres, where he mostly sold to teachers. Most of the matooke he sold was from their home, where they had an abundance of it.

After raising enough money, he chose to start taking merchandise to sell in Kampala. He would take chicken, eggs, and ghee to Kampala.

He would sell these mainly in Nakasero, Wandegeya and Katwe markets.

“I will never forget the day I made a huge loss. I had travelled a long way to Kampala in a bus, which also carried other people’s merchandise including Irish potatoes. When my baskets were removed from the cargo section, the chicken had suffocated to death and eggs broken.

I was divested. Even for the tins of ghee I was left with, I failed to get a buyer as I was told it had not been prepared well to the required standards,” Mutaasa recalls.

Using the small capital he was left with, he resorted to trading in small quantities of coffee beans of between 10kg to 50kg.

This was the main business he carried out during his Primary Seven vacation, until he joined Makobore High School for his secondary school education, where he was from 1969 to 1972.

Mutaasa Kafeero Plaza on Luwum Street in Kampala initiated the arcade revolution in the city.

While there, he served as class monitor in Senior Four and was later voted to the school council. He exploited trade opportunities he had noticed by selling cigarettes and medicines to both students and the teachers, many of whom were white.

The school had many white teachers including the headmaster Shirwood Collins, who is said to have been a frequent smoker. There was a place called the common market, where students were free to smoke cigarettes during the morning or afternoon break.

“I got the supply of packs of cigarettes and stocks of antibiotics from my brother-in-law Bumaali Kajjingo, who greatly traded in those items,” Mutaasa recounts.

Jinja becomes a turning point

During his Senior Four, he visited one of his relatives in Jinja and greatly admired the business opportunities he had seen in the area. This prompted him to opt for Jinja Senior Secondary for his Advanced Certificate of Education, which he did in 1973 and 1974. At that time, Jinja had many factories.

“By Senior Six, I had already established my stall in Jinja market. It sold mainly food items. In fact, from it I accumulated more than enough money out of which I opened a bank account to keep my savings safe,” he says.

After completing his secondary education, he joined Nkumba College of Commerce (now Nkumba University) for a Uganda Diploma in Business Studies majoring in accounting.

Upon completion of his studies, he immediately got a job in Jinja in the East African Steel Corporation Ltd, where he was put in charge of the wages and salaries department.

The company had more than 6,000 workers and mainly invested in producing steel bars, angles, wire nails, oxygen cylinders and many other products.

After performing well in his department, he was later promoted to head the sales and marketing department of the company.

Starts his hardware business

Serving in this position enabled him to get connected to many hardware business owners in and out of Uganda. This laid a good foundation for his private hardware business which became the major turning point in his journey to greatness in business.

After accumulating enough capital from his savings earned while working at the East African Steel Corporation Ltd, he opened a hardware shop along Lubas Road in Jinja town.

“I started my personal hardware business while I was still working in East African Steel Corporation Ltd. When we had built the corporation to its peak, I decided to resign and concentrate on my hardware outlet,” he explains.

Mutaasa’s hardware grew so much that he even started importing some of the products from Kenya, South Africa and Poland. Meanwhile, as he imported hardware products from Kenya, he realised the need to also export food products to Kenya.

In doing this, he mainly concentrated in exporting bogoya (yellow bananas) which were on high demand in Kenya.

“Whenever I took the bogoya to Kenya, they fought to buy them. I would use the money from the bogoya to buy hardware products in Kenya, which I would return with. This greatly helped me not to lose money in foreign exchange,” Mutaasa says.

Starts hotel business

As his business empire grew and made more and more money, he decided to invest in the hospitality industry by establishing Hotel Triangle in Jinja in 1986. The hotel started with only 12 rooms and later expanded to 185 rooms. Since there were few hotels in the country at the time, Mutaasa says he gained a lot from the business.

Mutaasa City building in Kasangati, Wakiso, is one of Mutaasa’s buildings outside Kampala.

“I think at that time we were only three Ugandans with private hotels. It was me, Augustine Kasozi who started Colline Hotel and Boney Katatumba who started Hotel Diplomate in Muyenga,” he recalls.

Mutaasa later established Hotel Triangle in Kampala on Buganda Road and another in Mbarara.

Mutaasa Kafeero Plaza

In 2000, Mutaasa bought land in the city centre near the Old Tax Park, where he constructed Mutaasa Kafeero Plaza that was opened in 2003. It was named after his grandfather Mutaasa and his father Kafeero.

Using creativity and innovation, he came up with a unique architectural design for the Mutaasa Kafeero Plaza, which created so many work spaces to allow a big number of traders operate within the building.

The existing buildings in the city centre did not have ample spaces that would accommodate many traders.

He says many of the commercial buildings that were subsequently constructed in the city centre used the architectural design of Mutaasa Kafeero.

Mutaasa has also established many other investments in Kampala and Wakiso, which have created jobs for many Ugandans.

Top secrets for getting rich

Another area from which Hassan Mutaasa Kafeero keeps making money is buying and selling real estate properties including land.

Asked to share with the New Vision readers on what he considers to be the key secrets for getting rich, Mutaasa said: “Using time productively is central in getting rich. In my case, I wake up at 4:00am every day and start thinking about ideas that can generate money. You cannot spend ample time thinking and fail to get breakthrough ideas.”

Making reference to the saying that the early bird catches the worm, Mutaasa strongly believes that people who wake up and start work early tend to be more successful than those who don’t in all spheres of life. Creativity and innovation, according to Mutaasa, is one other practice that creates the way to getting rich.

“You must be creative and constantly think of solutions. If something fails, don’t give up on it. Instead, look for better ways to approach it. With perseverance, you will ultimately succeed,” he explained.

For those doing business, he emphasises the importance of location. “If you observe, all my businesses are strategically located in areas where customers easily access them.”

Mutaasa, who is also a member of the Buganda Kingdom Parliament (Lukiiko), advises those who aspire to be rich like him to always seek to learn from successful people.

“Let them buy books of successful people like me and learn from them. I recently completed writing my book, where I share so many ideas for success in business. It is titled Mutaasa Kafeero; His Journey and Family History of the Abajungute,” he said.

Most profitable businesses

On what he considers to be the most profitable, Hassan Mutaasa Kafeero says trading in essential commodities used in every household is greatly rewarding.

“Whenever I took bogoya to Kenya, Kenyans would fight for it and I made a lot of profits out of it. Any business within the food value chain will most likely be profitable because in all circumstances people have to eat,” he elaborated.

On the mistakes he made, Mutaasa says he has, in the past, lost many golden business opportunities due to delays in taking necessary action.

“That is how I lost buying the prime plot of land in the city centre, where Mabirizi Complex is. I was notified about it early and I was asked to pay $500,000 (sh1.8b) for it. I actually had the money, but I decided to take my time hoping that the seller would be able to accept giving it to me at $350,000. As I was taking my time, someone else bought the plot. There are many other opportunities I missed in the same way.”

Mutaasa expressed dismay that whereas he has played a key role in Uganda’s economy through creation of thousands of jobs, economic opportunities and revenue generation for government, he is yet to receive an award from either Kampala Capital City Authority or a national medal given by the Central government.

“There are some Americans who conduct research on entrepreneurs who have significantly impacted the economic welfare of people. They awarded me an honorary PhD in Innovativeness, Ingenuity, and Humanities. Through Mutaasa Kafeero, I pioneered the concept of arcades in Uganda,” he swanked.