Moïse Katumbi Chapwe (; born 28 December 1964) is a Congolese businessman and politician. He was Governor of Katanga Province, located in the southern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from 2007 to September 2015. He was a member of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) until September 2015. He has been described by The Economist as "probably the second most powerful man in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the president, Joseph Kabila". Jeune Afrique named him "African of the Year" in 2015.
Background and personal life
Moïse Katumbi was born on 28 December 1964 to a Congolese mother of Bemba and Yeke tribe and a Sephardic Jewish father from Greece, Nissim Soriano. Katumbi's father, a Greek Sephardic Jew, fled Rhodes in 1938 with his two sisters after the introduction by the Italian fascist regime of the discriminatory Racial Laws (Rhodes had been under Italian occupation since 1912). He settled in Katanga, in the Congo, a Belgian colony at the time. Katumbi's mother was of Kazembe royalty of the Lunda people. His grandfather was Mwata Kazembe XIV (Chief of the Lunda kingdom) The family adopted the name Katumbi from a great-grandfather on his mother's side. Katumbi grew up in the village of in the Congo near Lake Mweru near the border of Zambia. His father was involved in the fishing trade.
Katumbi studied at the Kiwele school of Lubumbashi and the Kapolowe mission. He is married to Carine Katumbi. His older half-brother is Raphael Katebe Katoto, a businessman and retired politician who was a member of RCD-Goma and led a political party that opposed Congolese president Joseph Kabila in 2006.
Katumbi is one of the wealthiest people in the DRC. He has been the subject of two documentaries by director Thierry Michel: Katanga Business (2009) and The Irresistible Rise of Moïse Katumbi (2014).
Private career
Katumbi's career began in the fishing industry when he was 13. He sold salted and fresh fish to the state-owned mining company Gécamines. In 1987, he created the holding company Etablissement Katumbi to aggregate all of his business activities including mining, transportation, and food processing. Katumbi founded MCK (Mining Company Katanga) in 1997, which specialized in mining and logistics and subcontracted for mining companies in the region, including Gécamines. By 2015, the company had grown to 1900 employees and was a leading mining company in the country. French company Necotrans bought MCK in November 2015 for an undisclosed amount.
Around 2000, during the Second Congo War, Katumbi moved to Zambia, where he had business ties in transportation. He returned to the DRC in 2003 by invitation from President Kabila, who urged Katumbi to help fix the mining industry in Katanga.
Football
Since 1997, Katumbi has been the president of the football team TP Mazembe in Lubumbashi. The team has won the CAF Champions League title five times, including 2009, 2010, and 2015, and became the first African team to play in the FIFA Club World Cup finals in 2010. Katumbi has invested heavily in the team and been credited by the media and public as one of the reasons for the club's success. Under his tenure, the team has recruited players from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ghana, and Zambia, and retained local players by paying the highest wages for players in Africa. Katumbi invested $35 million in building the team a stadium which was completed in 2011. Katumbi began a football academy in 2012 as a social program to engage and train young Congolese people in the province of Katanga. In 2015, 2,000 young men were enrolled in the academy.
In 2012, Katumbi was elected to the FIFA strategic commission. In 2013, he was elected to the Africa Cup of Nations organizing committee, which he is slated to chair until 2017. He has also served on the marketing committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) since 2009.
Political career
In 2006, Katumbi was elected as a deputy in the National Assembly. He was the first democratically elected Governor of the Katanga Province in January 2007, receiving 94 votes out of 102.
Katumbi's governance has been credited with bringing economic revival to the province through developing infrastructure, encouraging foreign investment with tax breaks and reduced government procedures, and targeting corruption. Through Katumbi's efforts as governor, local taxes increased from $80 million in 2007 to more than $3 billion in 2014. Annual revenues increased from 100 million in 2007 to 1.5 billion by 2013.