Jignesh Shah

Vice-Chairman, Multi Commodity Exchange

In late May 2008, a deal was signed to create MCX Africa, a pan-African commodities exchange to be located in Gaborone, Botswana. The exchange is the brainchild of Jignesh Shah, a young billionaire entrepreneur from Mumbai, India.

Shah trained as an engineer at the University of Mumbai before studying capital markets at the New York Institute of Finance. In 1990, he returned to India to join the Bombay Stock Exchange and was part of the team that developed the BSE's online trading platform. Later, Shah and partners Joseph Massey and Anjani Sinha founded Financial Technologies India Ltd. (FTIL), which offered an automated commodities trading system. In 2003, the partners used FTIL's platform to create MCX. Within four years, MCX became India's largest commodities exchange.

His fortune assured, Shah took his trading system on the road. He set up the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange in 2005. Another exchange, the Global Board of Trade in Mauritius, is under way. Hopes are high for the new exchange in Botswana, which seeks to replicate MCX's stellar success. The Executive Director of MCX Africa is Chris Goromonzi, a South Africa-based Zimbabwean who was a founder of Trust Holdings.