"How are you going to make money in a country that doesn't even exist?" That was probably the question that many people had at the back of their minds when Mohammed Yusef told them he would invest in Somaliland.
Others perhaps did not even know Somaliland had declared independence from Somalia in 1991 and that, in spite of not having been recognised internationally, it does have - unlike Somalia - a working political system and a strong business sector.
Mr Yusef of course knew. Although he now manages a very successful investment firm in the United Kingdom, Invicta Capital Limited, he has always kept in touch with the land where he was born six decades ago, while it still was a British protectorate.
"If what my parents say is true, I always had a mentality for trade, for business, and it's not inconsistent with the family history because the family originated from a fishing village on the Gulf of Aden," he told the BBC's series African Dream.
"My great-grandfather was one of those people that would trade with Aden."
Mr Yusef was educated in the UK where he trained as a solicitor and practiced as a commercial lawyer before starting his own law practice specializing in commercial law, copyright and media law in London.
In 1999 he founded Invicta, a private equity firm providing finance for the media, commercial property and renewable energy sectors which, according to its website, has raised over £1.4bn ($2.3bn) of investment capital. Click here and read more................
Source: BBC News.
