Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa

Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa is a Rwandan tobacco manufacturer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. His company, Pan African Tobacco Group (PTG), is Africa's biggest manufacturer of tobacco products and competes with British American Tobacco on the continent. Ayabatwa's personal fortune was estimated at about $200 million by Forbes in 2012 and PTG's annual profits were estimated at $250 million...Meet the richest tobacco man, Forbes, 1 January 2014.
His PTG produces cigarettes in many African countries and the United Arab Emirates.
==Early life==
Ayabatwa had a hard early life experience. He was born in Rwanda in 1940. At age 12, he lost his mother to illness and at 16 he was expelled from school by the colonial administration when he was doing Grade 8 at the age of 16 and had to fend for himself after that. When the colonial administration continued to ferment ethnic tensions between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi, the latter to which Ayabatwa belonged, he fled home as he saw no future in Rwanda. He left to live in neighbouring Burundi as a refugee at the age of 19From refugee to Pan-African industrialist, AllAfrica.com, 10 March 2013.
==Career and business==
===Employment===
He landed his first job in Burundi in 1960, working for the Regional Post office that serviced communications between Rwanda and Burundi. He left this job and went to work for a petroleum-storage company, rising through the ranks to occupy a manager position at the age of 22Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa, Fox Chronicle, 4 August 2021.
===Business career===
Between 1968 and 1978, Ayabatwa's career turned successfullly into business. His first business adventure was a pickup truck he bought using his savings from the petrol company. Buying the second-hand truck, he hired a driver, and transported people and goods. At age 29, he started a bakery, with shops and supermarkets in Burundi ordering his breads. Making money here, he soon began to explore other business ventures. Realising the food shortages in Burundi, he started importing wheat, flour and salt from neighbouring countries. Armed conflicts in Tanzania disturbed his salt business but he managed to find alternative import routes in border areas occupied by anti-colonial rebel groups[https://billionaires.africa/2022/05/24/5-multimillionaires-from-rwanda-youve-never-heard-of/ 
Multi-millionaires from Rwanda], Billionaires.Africa, 24 May 2022.
From there he expanded his businesses and established himself as a gold trader, a venture he later regretted as he lost all his investment. In 1974, he began importing cigarettes from Tanzania to Burundi. He found the cigarette business profitable and made it his main business focus. In 1978 he established a tobacco manufacturing plant in Burundi, called Burundi Tobacco CompanyAyabatwa celebrates 60 years in business, AP News, 2 December 2020 and another in Democratic Republic of Congo. Ayabatwa lost the Burundi plant when President Pierre Buyoya nationalised it and imprisoned Ayabatwa for three years in 1987 on charges of conspiring to overthrow his government, accusing him of funding his political opponents. He helped the Rwanda Patriotic Front defeat President Juvénal Habyarimana. He funded the Rwandan Civil War. Fleeing from prison before funding the war, Ayabatwa arrived in South Africa in 1990 and had to start from scratch to establish himself once more in a foreign country. He established Mastermind Tobacco South Africa (Pty) Ltd in East London in the Eastern Cape which built up a manufacturing plant that produced cheap cigarettes brands like Yes and Forum from Eastern Cape and supplied across South Africa, and sales increased signicantly over a short space of timeAyabatwa: Rwandan refugee who became billionaire, Tstga.com
Ayabatwa's tobacco empire established foodprints in other African countries and the Middle East, with him leading the Pan African Tobacco Group (PTG) as a founder and majority shareholder until he retired in 2013 and left the company to elder son Paul Nkwaya and younger son Richard RujugiroPTG founder retires, PR Newswire, 3 January 2013Pan-African Tobacco Group founder to retire, Tobacco Reporter, 7 January 2013. Retrived 11 November 2023. Ayabatwa's personal fortune was estimated at about $200 million by Forbes in 2014 and PTG's annual profits were estimated at $250 million.
==Legal battles==
He was fined R250-million in 2009 by a South African High Court for defrauding the South African Revenue Service. The imposed fine was suspended for 5 years on condition that Ayabatwa swiftly pay the South African government R57-million in punishments for defrauding the tax institution, after Ayabatwa falsely represented impossibly explained cigarette packages in line of tax paymentsSars bust Lifman, News24, 12 April 2015
Ayabatwa never had a good relationship with any of the leaders that ruled Rwanda. His shopping complex in Rwanda, the Union Trade Centre, worth around $20million and the biggest in the country, was seized by Paul Kagame's government in 2015 and was declared an "abandoned property" because its owner, Ayabatwa, lives outside Rwanda, after a fallout with Kagame. Two years later the mall was sold at an outrageous auction for US$8 million, more than half its value. Ayabatwa went to court and in August 2022 the East African Court of Justice ruled in his favour; that the seizure of his mall was illegal. Before their fallout, Kagame and Ayabatwa were very close. Kagame's sister married Ayabatwa's cousin. Kagame's mother was taken care of by the resourced Ayabatwa throughou tafter President Milton Obote expelled all Rwandan refugees from Uganda"I can't fight Kagame," says Tribert Ayabatwa, New Vision, 18 March 2019, PR Newswire, 6 September 2022Tribert Ayabatwa vs Daily Maverick, Press Council, 3 April 2019. Retrieved 11 November 2023
Category:Tobacco companies
Category:Rwandan people
Category:Entrepreneurs
Category:Philanthropists