By William Davison on April 05, 2012
Horizon Plantations Ethiopia leased a 20,000-hectare (49,400-acre) plot in the northwestern Benishangul-Gumuz region last month to grow groundnuts, as part of a government drive to boost commercial agriculture, Jemal Ahmed said in an interview on April 3 in the capital, Addis Ababa.
Ethiopian-born al-Amoudi, who is ranked by Forbes magazine as the world’s 63rd-richest person and was worth $12.3 billion in March, owns 80 percent of the company, according to Ahmed. The Horn of Africa nation imports up to 250,000 tons of palm oil a year from Malaysia, at a cost of more than $300 million, said Jemal, whose company Ahfa Pvt. Ltd. used to be one of the top five importers of the product. “We want to substitute that with this project.”