Somali tycoon Abdirashid Duale's Dahabshiil to sell Chinese carmaker Chery's cars in Somalia

Somali tycoon Abdirashid Duale's Dahabshiil Group has signed a deal to sell vehicles made by Chinese carmaker Chery in Somalia, adding the country's biggest passenger-car exporter to a motor business that already sells Toyota, Hyundai and BYD models.

The agreement was signed on Tuesday in Wuhu, the city in China's Anhui province where Chery is based, between Chery Overseas Investment Corp. and Dahabshiil Motors, the group's vehicle unit. It makes Dahabshiil Motors an authorized Chery dealer in Somalia and includes warranty coverage for buyers, the Somali Embassy in China said in a statement announcing the deal.

Hodan Osman Abdi, Somalia's ambassador to China, attended the signing and congratulated both companies. The embassy said the partnership would give Somali consumers access to Chery vehicles backed by warranty services and would strengthen commercial ties between Somali businesses and Chinese manufacturers. The terms of the deal and the Chery models that will be offered were not disclosed.

A growing car business

Dahabshiil Motors was set up in 2019, when it brought Hyundai to Somaliland as the South Korean carmaker's sole distributor in the Somali regions. It opened with eight Hyundai models, including the Santa Fe, Tucson, Creta and Elantra, along with a commercial bus and a light truck, and built repair and service workshops to support them. Buyers could pay in cash or take Islamic murabaha financing from the group's bank.

The unit, which operates in Somaliland and Somalia, has since added Toyota, BYD, JMC and Sinotruk to its range and now sells new vehicles, spare parts, servicing and financing. Chery is its fourth Chinese brand, after BYD, JMC and Sinotruk.

Chery, founded in 1997, sold 2.81 million vehicles in 2025 and exported 1.34 million of them, up 17.4% from a year earlier. The company says it has been China's top exporter of passenger vehicles for 23 years in a row.

Call for a local plant

Abdi used the signing to press Chery to consider building a vehicle plant in Somalia. She pointed to the country's location on the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, its ports and its membership of the East African Community, the regional trade bloc Somalia joined in 2024. She said such an investment could create jobs and build technical skills among young Somalis.

The embassy said it would keep working to expand trade and investment between Somalia and China and to help Somali companies gain access to the Chinese market.

From remittances to fuel and phones

Dahabshiil began in 1970 as a small trading business in Burao, in what is now Somaliland, founded by Duale's father, Mohamed Said Duale. It grew into the largest money transfer company serving the Somali diaspora and now operates in more than 120 countries, with headquarters in Dubai and more than 2,000 employees.

Abdirashid Duale, who opened the company's first London branch in 1989, took over as chief executive from his father and has spread the group into banking, telecommunications, energy and real estate. Its holdings include Dahabshil Bank International, which opened in Djibouti in 2009, and a majority stake in Somali telecom operator Somtel, acquired in 2008.

In 2023, the group opened the first phase of the Dahabshiil Oil Storage Terminal in the Somaliland port city of Berbera, a facility in which Dahabshiil and its partners have invested more than $100 million. The terminal stores petrol, diesel and aviation fuel, and is planned to expand to 110,000 cubic meters of capacity.