IF HUNGER DOESN'T INSPIRE YOU THEN NOTHING CAN

The extreme poverty Amos Wekesa grew up with pushed him to earn $6 million a year with his tour companies.
The Java House café at The Village mall in Kampala is teeming with customers as smiling waiters serve coffee as hot as the afternoon mercury.

Amos Wekesa, who has run two of Uganda’s most successful tour companies, Great Lakes Safaris and Uganda Lodges, for the last 16 years, is here with friends, chilling in military style shorts and a t-shirt with the words ‘I’m So Uganda’ on it. Within minutes of speaking with him, it’s clear he is a walking-talking ambassador of his country.

“I have never boarded a plane in the last 10 years without ‘Uganda’ on my chest,” says the amiable 44-year-old. “I encourage every Ugandan to do the same. No one can talk about Uganda better than Ugandans, and everyone should help spread the message.”

With an annual income of $6 million from his companies, Wekesa says he has been fortunate, but has had to work extremely hard. The day we meet is his first day off in four weeks – he started it by running 10 kilometers and slept through the rest of it before heading to Java House.

The whole café seems to know him – customers and staff stop by his table to shake hands and ask about his most recent mountain expedition or his next trip across the Nile.

Power Woes Stall Uganda’s Rise

Wekesa, born into a family of smugglers in Lwakhakha on the border of Uganda and Kenya, says this is a world away from the life of penury he knew growing up in the 70s. Daily provisions were scarce and from the age of seven, Wekesa would smuggle rations like sugar and coffee from across the border to sell illegally in Uganda, sleeping with his many siblings in thatched houses that leaked. He never went to school until the age of 10, or even wore a pair of shoes until much after.

“The day of a hungry man is an extremely long day. If hunger can’t inspire you, then nothing in life can. And I was hungry for success,” says Wekesa.

Today, he owns properties across Uganda and hopes to build a five-star hotel in Entebbe before he turns 50. He already has two-and-a-half acres of land allotted for this purpose.