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Ghalib Said Mohamed has allocated TSh15 billion, about $5.7 million, solely for buying footballers at Young Africans, the Tanzanian club his conglomerate sponsors.
The figure was confirmed by Ali Kamwe, media officer at the club, known throughout East Africa as Yanga. "Our sponsor, Ghalib Said Mohamed, has allocated TSh15 billion solely for player recruitment," he said.
The money has already been spent. Yanga's most prominent signing is Peter Shalulile, the Namibian striker who left South Africa's Mamelodi Sundowns as a free agent and reportedly took a signing-on fee of about $700,000 on a two-year contract. Several other players have arrived alongside him.
The spending follows the appointment of a new coach. Manqoba Mngqithi, a 55-year-old South African who won multiple league titles at Mamelodi Sundowns, was confirmed on July 10, replacing the Portuguese coach Pedro Goncalves, who was dismissed in May.
Yanga is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital, and is one of the two dominant clubs in East African football. Its rivalry with Simba SC produces the Kariakoo Derby, the Tanzanian equivalent of the Soweto Derby in South Africa. The club has just won a fifth consecutive Tanzanian Premier League title, finishing on 75 points, two ahead of Simba.
That dominance has not carried into continental competition. Yanga were eliminated from the CAF Champions League, the premier club tournament in African football, at the preliminary rounds last season. Mngqithi was hired to change that, and said the prospect of returning to the competition was the main reason he took the job.
Mohamed is president of GSM Group, a Tanzanian conglomerate spanning general trading, transport and logistics, media, manufacturing, real estate, retail, petroleum and financial services. Its flagship is Galco Transport and Logistics, a cross-border logistics operator, alongside GSM Petroleum, which imports and trades refined fuel.
He inherited the base of it. His father built a trading business from the 1950s, starting by selling clothes and small goods on the streets of Tanga, a port city in northern Tanzania, and later expanding into cashew farming. Mohamed worked in that business before building GSM Group into its present form.
His involvement with Yanga extends beyond sponsorship. In February the club selected GSM as the investor and contractor to build a new stadium to CAF standards, ending years of renting the state-owned Benjamin Mkapa Stadium. In May the two sides agreed a structure under which Yanga provides the land and GSM finances construction, with ownership split equally.
Hersi Ally Said, the club president, called that a patriotic decision, noting GSM had accepted a 50-50 split despite putting up the larger share of the money. Said also works for GSM Group.
Neither party has published a budget or a construction timeline for the stadium.
The relationship drew criticism last August, ahead of Tanzanian elections, when Said presented TSh10 billion from GSM at a fundraising gala for CCM, the country's long-governing party, at an event Mohamed attended. Yanga separately donated TSh100 million. Supporters criticised the club's leadership over the smaller sum.
GSM Group is privately held and publishes no accounts.
Yanga begin their CAF Champions League campaign later this year.
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