Mohan Vaswani: Building West Africa’s Busiest Port
Mohan Vaswani is Chairman of Tolaram Group, the company behind the construction and development of the $1bn Lekki Port which is projected to be the busiest in West Africa and would help transform Africa’s largest economy when completed.
The Tolaram Group is headquartered in Singapore with operations in Nigeria, Estonia, Indonesia, Ghana, South Africa, Egypt and India.
But $900 million of its $1.1bn annual sales is made in Nigeria. Tolaram is Nigeria’s biggest food company after turning Indomie noodles into one of Nigeria’s national dishes. Over the past two decades, Tolaram has shed its other businesses across the world to focus almost exclusively on Indomie, entering a joint venture with the Indonesian company behind Indomie to manufacture it in Nigeria.
Now it is moving into infrastructure in a big way. The Lekki port is the anchor of an 800-hectare free economic zone the company plans to build.
Tolaram said the project would allow Lagos to reclaim its place as the region’s top port from nearby Togo, a much smaller country that has focused on making its port state of the art and its regulations business friendly.