History

Salimo Abdula dreamed of being a basketball player. At the age of 17, he led the basketball association in Zambézia, his native land. He played for the African Association and for Benfica in Quelimane. It was through basketball, that he realized that unity equals strength. To support himself and to pay for his tuition, he waited on tables in the bar at the old Cinema Aguiar. In 1980, he furthered his studies at the Commercial School in the city of Beira, and worked for the company Iluminante, the origin of his “accidental” business career. In order to continue his studies, he left for Maputo with no money. He boarded an “Antnov” plane, and was lucky not to pay for the air fare.

In Maputo, after several attempts, Salimo Abdula was “slotted” into an Information Technology Course, taught jointly by the Commercial Institute of Maputo and the Faculty of Mathematics of Eduardo Mondlane University. Iluminante, the company where he worked in Beira, was in debt, had back wages, and was about to be taken to public auction. The owners left leaving three Powers of Attorney, one for Salimo.

His former colleagues did not take over the company, but Salimo innocently did so without any notion of the size of its problems. He submitted a proposal of 400 meticais to the State, gathered the workers and revived Iluminante in 2 years. He focused on the production of electric cables, then selling shares in Iluminante, and created Electro Sul (1990). In 1996, he ran for a public tender for the privatization of Fadil E.E. He paid and took on the company, giving birth to Aberdare Intelec, and in the same premises, he later founded Intelec Lites.

Today, the group that leads (Intelec Holdings, SA) holds several companies and has shares in renowned companies such as Vodacom and Banco Único.