Meet Ghana’s Ibrahim Mahama, who built the largest indigenous-owned mining company in West Africa

Get to know Ghanaian business mogul and entrepreneur Ibrahim Mahama. He is the founder and owner of Engineers and Planners, a heavy-duty equipment renting company based in Accra, Ghana. 

His company rents to big mining companies operating in Ghana and other African countries as well as road contractors. Mahama ventured into this space upon his return to Ghana from England in 1997 when he noticed that the country’s mining and construction industries needed equipment, Emy Africa reported.

He then seized the chance to make a living renting heavy-duty equipment to contractors. However, his breakthrough came when he won a sub-contract to supply Razel-Bec with trucks for the construction of the Ako Adjei Interchange in Accra. 

“It is interesting. We didn’t even own the number of trucks that the contract required at the time but we still made do,” he told Emy Africa.

Three decades down the line, Engineers and Planners is the largest wholly indigenous mining and construction contracting company in West Africa and one of the largest in Africa. What is more, his company employs over 3000 people.

Following in the footsteps of celebrated entrepreneurs like Aliko Dangote, Mahama has diversified his investments, going into areas like agriculture. He is behind Asutuare Poultry Farms, which produces hundreds of thousands of eggs and 10,000 live broilers a day. Also, he owns Man Bosch Ghana (MBG) Ltd, a retailer of MAN trucks and other heavy-duty equipment. 

He recently launched Dzata Cement, becoming Ghana’s first wholly-indigenous cement manufacturer. He began constructing the factory in 2011. The company’s website says the factory is projected to create 1,200 direct jobs, with its production capacity projected to be 2 million tonnes of cement a year. 

Mahama has received worldwide recognition for his entrepreneurial exploits. He received the 2018 African Achievers’ Award in London, for African Industrialist of the Year 2018. He is also a recipient of the EMY Africa award.

Mahama was born in Piase in the Northern Region of Ghana to Emmanuel Adama Mahama, who became the country’s first Northern Regional Minister under Kwame Nkrumah. His mother, Joyce Tamakloe, comes from Keta in the Volta Region of Ghana. He is also brother to Ghana’s former President, John Mahama. Many say that it was easy for him to be successful due to his family’s background but Mahama told Emy Africa that he has prospered because he took risks and was open to learning, apart from seeking the right partnership.

After his secondary education at Ghana Senior High School, Tamale, in the Northern Region, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he studied at the College of North London. He worked for a property development company in London after college before his return to Ghana.

In Ghana, Mahama also co-founded the Joyce Tamakloe Cancer Foundation to raise funds for hospitals to help fight cancer.