Suhura Ismail Khan

Suhura Ismail Khan (* 1961 , 1962 , 1965 or 1966 in Jijiga ) is an Ethiopian entrepreneur. It deals with the Kaudroge khat and is considered the wealthiest woman in their country as well as one of the richest women in Africa. In September 2018, the estimated business magazine Forbes their assets to the equivalent of 200 million US dollars .

Life

Private life

Suhura Ismail Khan was born in Jijiga City in the 1960s and attended school for only five years. Her parents were small independent entrepreneurs and worked as khat traders . She has been married to Somaliland Mohammed Ismail Tarabi since 1993 and has ten children. Together with her husband, she went on a four-month pilgrimage - including Hajj - to Mecca in 2010 .

Khan, who has excellent contacts in government circles of the TPLF and who claims to have a "good connection to Prime Minister" Meles Zenawi , has been named Ethiopian Businesswoman / Businesswoman of the Year several times - partly because she pays more taxes than almost anyone else in the country. In 2008 alone, she paid the equivalent of 37 million US dollars to the state.

Business activity

Khan helped out in her parents' business at an early age and also worked as a Kath street vendor. Later she ran the business on her own, but did not make a big profit. In 1993 she came up with the idea of exporting the harvested bushes to neighboring Somaliland - 80 percent of all men there consume the young leaves as a light intoxicant ; However, due to frequent periods of drought, on-site cultivation is not possible. With this measure, Khan had discovered a niche in the market and was able to expand rapidly.

In the meantime, she heads a trading empire from Jijiga with several thousand employees, which has dozens of trucks and, since 2009, has her own airline ( Suhura Airways ) with Antonov cargo planes. It controls more than 50 percent of khat sales in Ethiopia, making it the world market leader. In 2011 she was selling between 30 and 40 tons of khat per day. Khan's company registration number 571 has meanwhile become the omnipresent trademark of her company in north-eastern Ethiopia. Khan organizes their export to other countries mainly through the Ethiopian embassies and consulates there . In addition, she has carried out extensive public relations work over the years and thus made a significant contribution to the fact that the chewing drug is recognized in Ethiopia as a completely normal commodity.

She had originally planned to retire from her company around 2010. During her pilgrimage, she left the business to her four eldest sons. However, since they generated a loss of the equivalent of more than one million euros in the comparatively short time , she then took over the management position again herself.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Philipp Hedemann: "How the queen of chewing drugs got rich". On August 26, 2011 on welt.de ( Die Welt ). Retrieved October 31, 2018.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Philipp Hedemann: "The Entrepreneur of the Year". On June 27, 2011 on cicero.de ( Cicero ). Retrieved October 31, 2018.
3. ↑ ^{a b} "Forbes ranks Top 10 richest people in Ethiopia in September 2018". On September 1, 2018 on forbes10.com ( Forbes ). Retrieved October 31, 2018.
4. ↑ Philipp Hedemann: The man who laughs at death. Encounters on my travels through Ethiopia. DuMont Reiseverlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-770-18251-0 .
5. ↑ Jörg Brase: "The legal business with the chewing drug khat".  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On June 26, 2013 on heute.de ( today ). Retrieved June 26, 2013.  
6. ↑ Philipp Hedemann: "Chewing drugs for the world from the Horn of Africa". On September 5, 2011 on derstandard.at ( Der Standard ). Retrieved October 31, 2018.