Dr. Samuel Tafesse’s success story

The Honorable Dr. Samuel Tafese, the owner of Sunshine Investment Group, turned from a newspaper collector to a billionaire. Samuel Tafesse is an Ethiopian Philanthropic, billionaire, a construction and real estate mogul. He is the owner and CEO of Sunshine Investment Group. Samuel is considered one of the very sharp business minds in Ethiopia. He started as an individual contractor going home to home and fixing people’s roofs and turned the business into one of the top construction and real estate companies in the country. Sunshine Construction was established in 1984 as a sole proprietorship and later in 1993 transformed into a private limited company.
According to Forbs, Samuel is one of Africa’s richest men, with an estimated net worth of 1.6 Billion Dollars. Samuel was born in Addis Ababa to a low-income family in one of the slams known as Cherkos Sefer. He is the firstborn of a family of five. His father was a civil servant. He was raised in a church and served Cherkos and Saint Gabriel churches. He spent most of his childhood working as a parking boy and street vendor to support his family financially. Samuel says he learned working hard, discipline, and starting small from his family. In the late 1980s, Samuel joined the Addis Ababa University Engineering department to study civil engineering. At the time, he was still working as an independent contractor fixing roofs and finishing works. He dropped out after his third year. He says his work was very demanding and he couldn’t attend classes and finish his degree.