Amin Mawji: Aga Khan was a patient and visionary leader who thought in generations

Mr Amin Mawji, the diplomatic representative of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) accredited to Kenya and Uganda, believes the spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims who died yesterday stood out for two key attributes: “He never tried to force an idea on you, he would try and sell it to you and make the case. Second, he was a very long-term thinker.”

These attributes, he says, applied to everything the Aga Khan did.

“I remember a time when I had first given him what was a five-year plan and he laughed. I realised afterwards that the reason why he must have found it very funny is because he thought in terms of 50-year intergenerational cycles of planning. We learned a tremendous amount from him both in terms of his vision, but also in terms of his leadership,” says Mr Mawji.

In the capital-intensive projects he undertook in East Africa and beyond, Mr Mawji says, The Aga Khan had two other similar principles he lived by: patience and the resolve to ensure that it was done in full consultation and involvement of the government.

“His Highness took a long-term view and had what we call patient capital. He brought in the funding and was patient with it to say ‘one day this region will come up, let us help them to get there’,” Mr Mawji says.

On the place of governments in the investments, Mr Mawji notes: “The idea was to sit with the government, agree what the priorities were and then decide where to put the investment. He wanted it done as part of the governments’ overall development programme, not in competition, not as a replacement.”

Mr Mawji says all projects by AKDN in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania “were designed for their time and space”.

He classifies them in terms of decades and the milestones hit by the network in various industries and how they all marry into each other for the bigger global picture: improving the quality of life of the most vulnerable populations through compassion and tolerance that upholds human dignity.

The first Aga Khan school established by AKDN in the early 1900s in Zanzibar and Mombasa, for example, was a girls school.

“That tells you something about the thinking, that this was about empowering all children, but looking at those who are particularly in need of empowerment. And so, the first schools were for the girl child,” says Mr Mawji, estimating that six million learners currently attend 200 Aga Khan schools annually.

By the 1920s, the pressing need during the colonial era was access to healthcare, which began with the introduction of the Aga Khan clinics. These have grown to an empire that serves 14 million patients every year worldwide.

By the 1930s, the push for financial inclusion was taking root, and the idea of an insurance company came about, birthing the first insurance operation in East Africa. The formation of the insurance firm coincided with the Golden Jubilee of the Imam then, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III, and hence the name Jubilee Insurance.

It now is the largest composite insurer in East Africa with over 1.9 million clients in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Mauritius; and is listed in three regional stock exchanges.

What followed closely was the Diamond Trust Bank (DTB), founded in the 1940s, and currently operating 130 branches in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi. Like Jubilee Insurance, DTB also got its name from the timing of the Imam’s Diamond Jubilee celebration.

“… Not surprisingly. We are not very creative with our naming,” says Mr Mawji.

In 1957, at a time Kenya and neighnouring countries were preparing for their independence, The Aga Khan succeeded his grandfather as Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims in 1957 at the age of 20.

Two years later, The Aga Khan founded the Nation Media Group (NMG), which has since become the largest independent media house in East and Central Africa, with operations in print, broadcast and digital media. NMG had a special place in his heart.

“The idea around NMG was to give mwananchi (the people) the tools through which they could be better informed, better educated and better entertained. But the idea was to (also) create a very vital organ of any democracy,” Mr Mawji says, a dream that would later be augmented by the Aga Khan Graduate School of Media and Communications “to uplift the standards of journalism” in the region.

In the 1960s, as newly independent countries in East Africa sought economic progress, The Aga Khan founded Industrial Promotion Services (IPS), which Mr Mawji says was “to show that different industries could actually start”.

IPS established and managed companies in agribusiness, packaging, pharmaceuticals and infrastructure.

“IPS was designed to demonstrate that it was possible to do this in East Africa. It was possible to do it at international levels of quality, but also to help the governments to determine the industrial policy for these sectors,” Mr Mawji says, highlighting the need that then went to develop tariffs policies, regulatory frameworks and industry standards.

The next decade saw the establishment of the Tourism Promotion Services—which trades under the brand name Serena, and is now in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique, as well as in Asia in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.

“His Highness was uncompromising when it came to quality. His view generally on everything was that don’t ever tell me ‘it’s good enough for Africa’; it’s got to be good enough for the world before we do it here. And so that was his basic principle,” says Mr Mawji.

In the 2000s, AKDN invested in East Africa’s very first broadband undersea cable known as SEACOM. Then came the Bujagali Power Station in Uganda to address what were then regular cases of load shedding.

If you were to ask Mr Mawji whether the AKDN’s projects in East Africa, and indeed the rest of the world, have lived up to the Aga Khan's hopes and dreams, he would not give you a direct answer.

“His Highness believed in this idea of continuous improvement. He would have answered your question, I think, by telling you that there was never a time when we stopped and said, OK, we’ve now achieved what we want to do,” he says.

In all, the envoy says, the initiatives under AKDN, which focuses on human capital, can be better seen as multipliers: Hospitals that help keep a population healthy, schools that promote and provide knowledge, power and industry plants that provide jobs, media that helps keep the flames of democracy burning.

Is there philanthropy to it?
“His Highness often spoke at length about this issue to explain to people that he was doing this work not because he was a philanthropist; he was not doing this work because he thought in charity terms. He tried to make it clear that he saw this as a duty of leadership in Islam. So, he was a leader in Islam and to him it was not a question of trying to be a good person or a benefactor. It was a question of fulfilling his duty as a leader,” Mr Mawji says.

“Unfortunately, a lot of that gets lost in some of the descriptions about him, which are in terms of describing him as a philanthropist. That’s not really an accurate way of looking at the motivation that led to the great work that he led.”

The next area of focus, Mr Mawji says, is healthcare—tackling non-communicable diseases, development of the pharmaceutical industry, mental health and what it means to the population, and availability of knowledge to expand access to the best care.

On schools, Mr Mawji says AKDN has its eyes set on the digital revolution and what that means, and in climate change, leading in research, helping communities battle the ravages of the phenomenon, and enhancing environment resilience efforts.

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