“I’m not interested in financing a rocket to the moon, or spending billions of dollars on a taking a trip around Mars,” says Canadian-based international businessman and global philanthropist Altaf ‘Aly’ Nazerali. “Let’s focus on our problems here today.”
While a singular sense of foresight and purpose has long been the driver of Nazerali’s career success – a six-decade journey spanning Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas – it is with a renewed sense of perspective that the entrepreneurial capitalist looks to the future, and the opportunities it presents.
Vindicated in August 2018 in a precedent-setting defamation case against two U.S.-based conspiracy theorists that dragged through the legal system for seven years (culminating in the largest monetary award of its type in British Columbia, one of the largest in Canada, and permanent injunctions against the defendants), Vancouver-based Nazerali is now busy getting back to what he does best: seeking interesting business opportunities internationally, and developing young companies in high-potential sectors like communications, software development, health, and renewables.
“It was a seven-year ordeal that took an immense toll, not only emotionally, but financially on my business and social life,” says Nazerali. “But my big takeaway is that that there is a justice system in Canada that works. The truth does eventually prevail. The outcome in my case has already been referred to in numerous other defamation and Internet law cases, and it demonstrates that you can’t hide behind the Internet and behind borders, because there are none on the Internet.”
His name cleared and the record set straight, Nazerali says he’s excited to embrace new business opportunities, particularly those that embrace environmental sustainability and support future generations.
“Nobody will remember you 50 years from now for the car you drove or the house you lived in or the watch you’ve worn,” says Nazerali. “But if you build a school that educates 500 kids who then educate their kids, they will possibly remember you. If you’ve created a fund to help needy people get the health care they need, they might remember you.”
These values, Nazerali says, were instilled in him by his parents, his lifelong faith community, and by the business mentors he has met and embraced along the road to his considerable success.
The Back Story
Aly Nazerali was the second generation of his family born in East Africa and was raised in the Congo during a politically-charged period of the post-colonial era. By the time he was 20, he had earned a B.A. in Economics and Islamic Civilizations and his MBA in Finance and International Business from Columbia University. But Nazerali says his story truly begins over a century ago, in the western Indian state of Gujurat.
Members of the Ismaili faith, a sect of Shia Islam, Nazerali’s grandparents escaped famine and a lack of opportunity in Bhuj, India, in the late 19th Century. They made sail across the Arabian Sea for East Africa, first settling in Tanganyika, now Tanzania. It was there, in 1911, that Nazerali’s grandfather established a school in Moshi, on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. The family eventually settled in Mombasa, Kenya where Nazerali was born. This family tradition of community service and a strong belief in the benefits of education, values deeply ingrained in the Ismaili community, would have a profound effect on Aly Nazerali, later shaping his own life and philanthropic work.
“Very early on, education was drilled into the family,” says Nazerali. “My parents impressed upon me the fact that the only thing they couldn’t take away from you during revolutions, nationalizations, dictatorships, Idi Amins, was what you had between your ears; you better fill that up as best as you can.”
Graduating with exceptional grades from an American international high school in the Congo, Nazerali aced the entrance exam to Columbia University. Just a week before the young Nazerali was to fly to New York City, however, the university’s dean sent a letter to the family.
“It was only after I had been admitted that the dean realized that I was 15 years old,” Nazerali recalls. “He sent an urgent telegram to my family saying, ‘Please don’t come because we can’t accommodate you. Although you’re academically qualified, New York State law forbids us to have anybody under 17 staying in the dorms.’ To which my father responded by going to the American Embassy and writing a notarized letter saying that he would take full responsibility for me to find my own accommodation.”
And so – with the help of an acquaintance of his father’s in New York – 15-year-old Aly Nazerali found himself in the Big Apple with three flat mates and a full academic roster. By 18 he had completed his undergraduate degree, one of the youngest graduates ever at Columbia. By 20, he was a freshly-minted MBA.
A Changing Climate
“Just before I graduated, the political climate in Africa changed,” Nazerali recalls, of those years in the early 1970s. “You had phenomena like Idi Amin and Marshal Mobutu surface. It became clear that my family would have to leave. And I very quickly realized that my expectation of going back and joining my family’s businesses in Africa were not going to happen, and I better get a job soon.”
Some 20,000 East African Ismailis came to Canada from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda during the 1970s, beginning with 7,000 from Ugandan following a decree by dictator Idi Amin expelling Asian-origin Africans from that country. As Nazerali’s family was resettling in Vancouver, Canada under an immigration program enacted by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, young Aly Nazerali was launching his business career in New York.
The International Businessman
Nazerali was hired in 1975 by American telecom giant GTE International (now part of Verizon) as a financial analyst. With his business acumen and ability to speak several regional languages, Nazerali was quickly promoted to Algerian in-country manager where he helped construct a US$235 million product-in-hand project to build the world’s then largest electronics plant. During his tenure, GTE won contracts to build a network of 14 earth stations providing television, radio and telecommunications to remote regions in the Sahara, and additional stations in Mali and Niger. By 1979, total contract values approached US$1 billion.
“They needed somebody to go on the ground, they took a chance on me,” Nazerali recalls. “The gentlemen who hired me was a senior executive running the project who is now in his nineties, and still a very close friend of mine. I’ve been very lucky in engaging with people who are significantly older than I am, a world older than I am, and developing a trusted relationship where it went beyond just being boss and employee, but also teacher.”
Nazerali’s storied business career spans four decades, and as many continents. But he credits those early years in North Africa and the Middle East with fostering the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that would become hallmarks of his working life.
“Not only did I gain incredible international exposure, but I got into the financial industry as a result of being involved in these large infrastructure projects,” he says. “As the oil money started to run out in the late ’70s, you had to be creative in structuring large-scale projects like hospitals, hotels, social housing projects, dams, and bridges so they could be financed in a way that the customer –usually a government or a state owned enterprise – would be able to afford.”
Nazerali became skilled in barter, and countertrade, and in delivering turnkey solutions that the competition was hard pressed to match.
“When a customer wants a hospital, he doesn’t necessarily just want a building with beds, he wants a functioning facility,” Nazerali explains. “That was the creative input saying, ‘Don’t look at the price of the concrete, look at what I’m going to deliver to you as a turnkey project; what’s more, we’ll run it for you for a period of time and train your personnel on how to maintain the X-ray machine and maintain the air conditioners until your staff can take over.”
Enduring Values
Nazerali says that as a member of the tight-knit Ismaili community, it has always been instilled in him to remain strong as a community, to help build infrastructure, and to try and help not only yourself, but also the larger community in which you live. Reflecting on these points, Nazerali says his own philanthropic work has always focused on two interrelated areas of human concern – education, and health care.
“I’ve been very focused on working in the educational sector,” says Nazerali. “With today’s technologies, distance learning is a reality. In places where it’s difficult or costly to have physical infrastructure, distance learning becomes very important. And for that, you have to have basic telecom, the high-speed Internet, the capability to be able to talk to a professor who is sitting in maybe New York and you’re sitting in a remote part of India or Africa.
Related to that, adds Nazerali, is the health-care sector.
“Give the mother the benefit of education and the basics of good maternity care, pre-maternity care, and help her with the early childhood of her children and then expose them to high-quality education and the world is your oyster,” he says. “I’m a good example of that because I came from a family where my father did not have shoes until he was 11 years old. Here I am, an Ivy League graduate, travelling the world with impunity, and the only reason that happened was because I was exposed to education. I’m very focused on that. That’s where a lot of my philanthropic giving has been.”
Aly Nazerali and his family settled in Vancouver in the late 1980s. He is a proud Canadian, and proud of Canada, where his community – now estimated at some 80,000 strong – has found acceptance and well-earned success.
“Canada is one of the very few countries that encourages pluralism, allows you to maintain your distinct cultural and linguistic identity while at the same time encouraging you to learn from the rest of Canadians and embrace their openness, embrace the sense of fairness this country has, the tremendous economic opportunity that it offers to people who are willing to work hard,” says Nazerali. “That’s been demonstrated just by the success of my community, which has been here for only for 50 years and is statistically negligible in size but has put forward some of our most prominent and successful Canadians today.”
The Way Forward
Over his career, Aly Nazerali has found success in multiple countries and dozens of sectors, from large scale communication and engineering projects, to commodities and futures trading and investments in natural resources and logistics, software development and telecom Infrastructure.
Today, the self-described venture capitalist says he has a new perspective on progress, and it is framed within the context of sustainability and long-term growth.
“There’s a way of making money without damaging the environment,” he says. Look at water. Water is becoming a very precious commodity worldwide. There are numerous countries that are actually going dry and will not have enough drinkable water within the next 50 years. Yemen is running out of the water; it cannot sustain its current usage of water given its population and its growth. Jordan is running out of the water. The Caspian Sea is drying up. The Aral Sea is already completely dry. Water is going to be a very precious commodity, more precious than oil. And that is just one area of opportunity in the context of climate change and all the other natural phenomena that are happening around the world.”
As an early adopter of a global vision of the world, and a Canadian thought-leader in business development and technological innovation, Aly Nazerali says he’s excited for the future and ready to embrace new projects and opportunities.
“Watch this space,” he says, with a chuckle. “There is much more to come.”