Elnefeidi Group

About the Founder

Bashir Elnefeidi was born in the small town of El Geteina, Sudan, in 1917 into the Shaigiya tribe. When Bashir was three years old, his mother passed away and he, his two elder brothers, and one younger sister were raised by his father.^[5] The family was involved in trade, so he was exposed to the local trade scene from childhood. In the early 1930s, teenage Bashir moved to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to join his elder brothers, who had a shop in the Arabic Souq. Bashir assisted in running the shop and soon started a few independent ventures, including opening a small soap store.^[6]

With a vision of taking the family business to the next level, Bashir took literacy and adult education classes at the Khartoum Worker’s Club, as he had not received any formal education up to that point.^[7] In 1937, he married his cousin Etouma Malek, and the couple had a son, Omar, in 1940.^[8] Bashir subsequently married again and had six more children.^[9]

Founding Story

By 1940, Bashir was having increasing success as a local trader. Early in the decade, he purchased a truck to provide transportation services, and in 1950, he became involved in the manufacture of cooking oil. He also set up a cotton plantation business, the Megabi Project, with one of his elder brothers. In the late 1960s, he opened a factory in Khartoum under the name Elnefeidi Foods. In 1968, Elnefeidi Group was established, encompassing the brothers’ four key business lines: logistics, oil manufacturing, food processing, and wholesale trade.^[10] In 1974, the brothers decided to split the operations,^[11] with Bashir focusing on the group’s transportation business.^[12]

Growth Phase

Bashir would involve each of his sons in the business as soon as they reached early adulthood. In the 1970s, his son Amin moved to the UK to pursue his undergraduate degree. During Amin’s time abroad, Bashir assigned him the role of maintaining contacts with British suppliers. After graduating from Cambridge University, Amin returned to Khartoum to take an official position in the family business alongside his brothers Omar, Salah, and Ma’amoun.^[13]

For most of the decade, Omar, the founder’s eldest son, was in charge of the group’s agriculture supply chain. Salah oversaw the logistics sector, Ma’amoun managed finances, and Amin set up the group’s first import-export department, initiating agricultural exports to Egypt, Djibouti, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, and importing trucks and automobiles from Europe.^[14]

Following the discovery of oil in Sudan in the late 1970s,^[15] Bashir’s son Tariq became involved in the business and managed the group’s expansion into the oil sector, while his brother Ahmed was in charge of heavy vehicle spare parts. Bashir’s youngest son, Gamal, was in charge of livestock management.^[16] In 1988, Elnefeidi Commercial Transport, which would become the key contributor to the group’s financial success, began operations with 15 Fiat trucks.^[17]

In the early 1990s, Omar Al-Bashir became president of Sudan following a military coup. The next three decades were challenging ones for the country’s privately owned businesses: free trade was hindered due to the regime’s monopoly over multiple business sectors as well as US sanctions.^[18] This left Sudanese business owners with two choices: moving operations outside Sudan or searching for alternative sectors.^[19]

The Elnefeidi Group was by this point a major regional exporter of livestock to Yemen. One day, the new government simply decided to halt the group’s exports, even stopping a ship from entering Yemen and forcing it to return to Port Sudan at enormous cost to the company. Following this, Amin Elnefeidi left Sudan in 1992 to work in the real estate sector in the US,^[20] while the group continued to operate in Sudan under the leadership of other family members.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Elnefeidi Group continued to grow, especially in the transportation sector. Reflecting on this era, Amin Elnefeidi states, “The government tried their best but they couldn’t make it in transportation. It is one of those tough businesses where you need to closely monitor trucks traveling all over Sudan.”^[21] They also expanded into parallel sectors: In 2005, Elnefeidi Group founded Inmaa Company in collaboration with Egypt’s Al Wadi Holding Group. The same year, Bashir Motors was created under the group’s umbrella, offering car dealership and rental services.^[22]

In 2011, South Sudan became an independent state, shrinking the Sudanese market by 40 percent. To address this challenge, the group set up a consolidated marketing department and hired the first female family member as a marketing manager. The revitalization of the group’s marketing strategy was a success,^[23] and by 2016, the group had established vital international partnerships with companies including Fly Dubai, Samsung, BMW, and Volkswagen. They became the official distributor of Nissan Infiniti motor vehicles in Sudan, while Elnefeidi Commercial Transport had expanded to become the largest inland logistics companies in Sudan and one of the largest in Africa. ^[24]

Today

Today, the Elnefeidi Group is led by the second generation, and the third generation is involved in operations.^[25] Amin Bashir Elnefeidi is group president, while his brother Salah is first deputy chairman.^[26] The group runs a fleet of well over 1,000 trucks, extending into Central Africa from bases in Cameroon and Tanzania. The group makes most revenue from Raiba – part of its logistics division. It has divisions in the UAE, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, and Djibouti and has transported humanitarian aid for the United Nations’ World Food Programme to Darfur and neighboring Ethiopia.^[27]