Our story is very much aligned to the life journey of our founder, Athenkosi Peter, who grew up in the rural Eastern Cape in his early years and also spent a large proportion of his formative years in the urban Eastern Cape in Bhisho and East London. This was during a unique time in South African history, the sanctions of Apartheid SA from the rest of the world and a transition to a democratic South Africa. The experiences of this transition period, which continue to this day as the transition though procedurally complete, South Africa is yet to achieve a truly substantive democracy.
Having a profound sense of justice and just how something in post-apartheid South Africa wasn’t right, our founder always had a developmental and politically aware persona. This was probably cultivated from political prisoners in his family who served alongside the liberation
movement on Robben Island. The social awareness, the political injustice was something that was always revealed and explained to him.
Over time and through growth and exposure in the ‘new’ South Africa he continued to thrive and attain leadership status in every arena of his life and he always felt there’s a profound difference he can make. As the founding fathers of democratic South Africa have always lamented, our freedom in South Africa is not complete if our brothers and sisters of different nationalities and creeds are unfree in the rest of the world. Therefore, our founder always saw his destiny as being the advancement of progress, good living standards and freedom wherever he could find the need was most prevalent. Therefore, while having a keen sense of local issues, he also cast his net outward, beyond the borders of his native land. East Africa was the first foray outside South Africa.
At the time of this outward look, 2010, a variety of catalytic investments were being undertaken by East Africa and it was actively looking to connect to the world and especially South East Asian countries like China. Big infrastructure investments were announced like the Lamu Port- South Sudan-Ethiopia-Project (LAPSSET) which would connect the northern East African nations and also Natural Gas was discovered off the coast of Tanzania.
Our founder decided he wanted to be a part of these integration projects where Africa’s long displaced people by colonization could unite and create their own prosperity. Tanzania was chosen as the initial foray because of its link to South Africa historically. The link became ever more profound as our founder delved deeply into the history of Tanzania and how it had supported many of Africa’s liberation movements. How many Africans owe their very freedom to the actions, generosity and Ubuntu of the Tanzanian people to house their persecuted revolutionary leaders and to give platforms for revolutionaries to launch independence resistances from there. The poverty that he saw he felt was not right considering how much the Tanzanian people had done for Africa. It is this reason that Tanzania would always hold a special place in the soul of Arushvest Capital.
The name “Arushvest”
is a compound noun incorporating the words,
“Arusha and Investments”. Our founder’s journey led him to discover a tribe of distant cousins to his very own Xhosa tribe, the Chagga tribe. Xhosa people who live and have grown up in Tanzania identify that this tribe is the closest people to the Xhosa nation in terms of culture, personalities and general view of the world. The Chagga’s ancestral home is Moshi near the town of Arusha at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa. Therefore, to acknowledge the connection between the two tribes through his work in Tanzania, Arushvest Capital Pty Ltd, was born.
Therefore, Arushvest Capital was formed to showcase the interconnected and shared history of Africa’s people. To breakdown the artificial borders created by colonization. To ensure Africans are connected through the spirit of Ubuntu and to lead the African Renaissance into a connected Africa that works together and is a united front in its dealings with the world. The journey has just begun but to ironically quote a verse from James Bond, “The World is Not Enough”, Africa is on the Rise.
