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The Elnefeidi family has built eight grain silos at Cameroon's main port, adding 40,000 tonnes of storage capacity at Douala-Bonabéri.
Afisa Food Industry developed the facility jointly with the Port Authority of Douala. Each silo holds 5,000 tonnes, and under the arrangement Afisa operates the complex for about 20 years before handing it to the port authority.
What it buys is speed. The complex includes a Vigan suction system that pulls grain directly from a ship's hold at up to 600 tonnes an hour, which the port authority says will let a grain vessel be emptied in under three days instead of the week or more conventional unloading takes. That frees the berth for the next ship.
It also breaks a near-monopoly. Grain handling at Douala was concentrated almost entirely around the facilities Grand Moulin Cameroun uses at berth 13 before Afisa built.
The silos exist to feed Afisa's own mills. The company was founded in 2015 and runs plants at Douala, Yaoundé and Ngaoundéré, and it has gone from milling 270 tonnes of wheat a day to 950, with a target of 2,000 tonnes by 2027 to supply Cameroon, Chad and the Central African Republic.
Who owns it runs through Dubai to Khartoum. Afisa belongs to Trans Afrique General Trading, incorporated in Dubai in 2010, which is wholly owned by the Elnefeidi Group. Trans Afrique works across flour milling, food imports, transport and logistics, construction and real estate in Cameroon, Chad and neighbouring countries.
Hussein Bashir Elnefeidi runs Afisa as managing director. Amin Bashir Elnefeidi is president of the group and his brother Ahmed is chief executive.
The business their father started was a shop.
Bashir Elnefeidi opened a small retail outlet in Sudan in 1934 with two brothers, and by 1940 had become a successful local trader. He bought a truck to carry goods for other people, moved into manufacturing cooking oil in 1950, started a cotton plantation with an elder brother, and opened a food factory in Khartoum in the late 1960s.
The brothers formalised it as Elnefeidi Group in 1968, covering logistics, oil manufacturing, food processing and wholesale trade, then split the operations in 1974 with Bashir taking transport.
He put each of his sons into the business as they came of age. Amin was sent to Britain for his degree and told to keep the family's British suppliers warm while he was there, and he came back from Cambridge to a position alongside his brothers Omar, Salah and Ma'amoun.
The group is now the largest family business in Sudan, employs between 1,000 and 5,000 people, and spans agriculture, automotive, logistics and real estate from a Khartoum headquarters.
Where that headquarters sits matters. Sudan has been at war since April 2023, and Khartoum has been among the worst affected places in it, which makes assets in Douala considerably more valuable than assets at home.
The International Finance Corporation was weighing a $19 million facility for Trans Afrique and its two Cameroonian subsidiaries last year, intended to fund wheat imports and expand milling capacity.
The port authority has folded the silos into a plan to lift Douala's handling capacity to about 23 million tonnes a year by 2030 and 45 million by 2050.
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