Featured | Aug 24,2019
At first light in Addis Abeba’s Qality District, the smell of freshly roasted Yirgacheffe beans drifts into the yeasty haze from Shoa Bakery’s ovens, a blend that sums up Ethiopia’s family firms. Such outfits are scarce everywhere, yet in Ethiopia, roughly 40pc are run by second-generation heirs and a small but rising troupe by a third. On average, these “legacy” businesses are 30 years old, teenagers in company terms, old enough to feel the strain of succession, governance and capital.
Heleanna Georgalis felt that strain when her father died in 2008 and left her Moplaco Trading Plc with, as she says, “zero rehearsal time.” Relatives doubted a linguistics graduate could read a ledger; she countered with charm and spreadsheets. Seventeen years later, Moplaco ships 1,000tns of speciality beans to Europe each year, generating about seven million dollars in sales and still finishes some jute bags by hand to keep 84-four-yearold staff employed.
Graffiti above the cupping table declares, “Power is in the unity.” She laughs that unity vanished in the tea-fuelled meeting where cousins tried to block her appointment. But, she understood and never holds grudges.
The Asfaw siblings keep their heads down at Chamber Printing House. Founder Asfaw Tefera turned a 4,000 Br loan in 1965 into presses now rolling out labels for MOHA soft drinks and East Africa Holdings, pulling in 120 million Br a year. Their motto is “Always fly under the radar.” Mathematician-turned-manager Tsegaye Asfaw shelved actuarial dreams to rescue the company and answered to “Tsegish” in a boardroom where siblings trade barbs but rarely vote.
In Lideta, the Belay brothers rule sponge cake. Their father once sold slices to schoolchildren for five cents; the same piece now costs 60 Br, a 1,100pc real terms jump even after decades of currency erosion. The company works to a scribble in a coffee-stained notebook: “Better small money from many people than big money from a few.” Volume, not margin, shields them from Ethiopia’s whipsaw wheat prices. “No customer leaves angry today,” says co-owner Amanuel Belay. A stale cake starts a rumour; a rumour empties the till; an empty till splits brothers.
Bread still means comfort, and Shoa Bakery remains Ethiopia’s security blanket. Founder Zemui Zemuye sold 20 loaves for a Birr; his children now run 14 branches plus flourmilling and pasta lines. Heir Tsehaye repeats a hard learned axiom: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” That saved the bakery in 1985 when the military government seized imported machinery and nearly, as he puts it, “sank the dough.” Diversification kept the ovens hot through blackouts and devaluations.
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