Mahesh Kotecha’s Journey from Uganda to Wall Street Via MIT and the UN

India cannot be a counter weight to China’s dominant role in Africa since the Indian economy is comparitively small says Mahesh Kotecha

(Photo: Mahesh Kotecha, left, on a recent visit to Africa.)

March 7, 2025

Mahesh Kotecha runs Structured Credit International, which he founded in 1999. Based in New York, it provides advisory services, including credit ratings advice, to public and private financial institutions in Africa and elsewhere. Clients have included Access Bank of Nigeria, West African Development Bank, Central American Bank for Economic Integration, Asian Development Bank, the Nordic Investment Bank, as well as municipal authorities such as Ho Chi Minh City Urban Development Fund, Vietnam, and Eletricidade da Madeira, Portugal.

Kotecha was an investor and a Board Member of BRC Investors Service, a Colombian rating agency. It was acquired by Standard & Poor’s in 2014. He was a Board member, 2006–2015, of TurkRating, a Turkish rating agency, where he remains a shareholder.

Earlier, Kotecha worked at Wall Street and financial firms in New York, including as a Managing Director of MBIA Insurance, 1998, and Capital Markets Assurance, 1989-1998, both financial guarantee companies. He was a Senior Vice President at investment bank Kidder, Peabody, 1987-1989. From 1979 until 1987, he worked for Standard & Poor’s, where he was responsible for rating global borrowers, sovereign governments, and international structured financings. Prior to S&P, Kotecha worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 1975-1979, and the United Nations Population Fund, 1973-1975.

Kotecha, 77-years-old, holds a MS in management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, 1971-72, and a BS in physics and engineering from Harvey Mudd College, California, 1966-1970. He graduated from the Aga Khan Secondary School in Kampala, a day school for boys and girls, 1964-1965, and Jinja Secondary School, 1960-1963, both in Uganda. He was born in Jinja, Uganda, the source of the river Nile.

Since 1980, Kotecha has lived in Hastings on Hudson, a suburb of New York. His book, The River Finds Its Course: One Man's Journey from Stateless Ugandan to American Banker, was recently published.

In this Global Indian Times interview, Kotecha talks about how cuts in U.S. aid funding hurts Africans, growing up in Uganda, his family being forced to leave Uganda by dictator Idi Amin in 1972, why Wall Stree jobs are more sweat than glamour, and China’s growing influence in Africa.

GIT: Since you travel often to Africa to advise banks there, what will be the impact of President Donald Trump’s recent cuts in foreign aid?

Kotecha: The cuts are deeply damaging not just in Africa. At the Mengo Hospital in Uganda, where a staff of 26 will be terminated, 9,000 AIDS patients will be abandoned. Similarly, treatment of millions, with AIDS and other diseases, will be halted in other poor countries.

It is a shame and a crime that the richest man on earth (Trump advisor Elon Musk) wields a chainsaw against the poorest of the earth.

GIT: You worked for 23 years on Wall Street and in finance jobs. Like most in such a career, you moved from job to job, a total of six jobs starting at the Federal Reserve Bank. What was the experience? What kept you going?

Kotecha: The New York Federal Reserve Bank sponsored me for a green card. I gained experience in US capital markets, which led to my interest in country risk and my job at Standard and Poor’s (S&P).

My position at S&P gave me great visibility into global financial markets. This led to my being named to the International Advisory Panel of the East African Development Bank. It was also my introduction to structured finance that led to my job at Kidder Peabody, where I structured the first public collateral debt obligation in 1989 (NJK Financial transaction); advised Israel and Turkey on their large US structured Finance Transaction; and advised the International Finance Corporation, helping them obtain the top credit ratings.

Kidder paved my way to a position at Capital Markets Assurance in the financial guarantee business. I originated and executed several billions in structured transactions and established an emerging markets financial guarantee company in Asia - Asian Securitization and Infrastructure Assurance. It guaranteed $2 billion in transactions in two years before it was downgraded owing to credit downgrades during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.

In 1999, I set up Structured Credit International to advise emerging markets clients on ratings and structured financing. I am still doing this, now with a greater focus on African banks.

What kept me going was a commitment to learning and to helping emerging countries, especially in Africa.

GIT: What was it like as one of the few Indians, even though from Africa, on Wall Street in the 1970’s and 1980’s?

Kotecha: It was lonely in the sense that there were no other Indians in the business that I knew for several years - except one or two economists at the New York Federal Bank. This began to change in the 1990s. I met Sanjeev Khanna at Morgan Stanley and Nigeria’s Bayo Ogunlesi at Credit Suisse, who were my clients when I was at Capital Markets.

Meanwhile, I was helped by many good friends. At S&P - Ed Emmer, Roger Taillon and Phil Bates who I hired from the New York Fed. At Capital Alex Lam and Jack Caouette. In the investment banking world Peter Gottsegen at Solomon Brothers, Leslie Goldwasser, Scott Ulm, and Michael von Clemm at Credit Suisse, David Meachin and Tom Capassi at Merrill Lynch, Peter Atwater and Rick Felix at Goldman Sachs, Ed Waters, Mel Rines and Michael DiGiacomo at Kidder Peabody and Hani Findakly at Drexel.

(Photo: Mahesh Kotecha, standing at left, with friends, at a British cannon in Entebbe, Africa, 1963.)

GIT: You started your career in the U.S. at the United Nations. Why?

Kotecha: My goal changed while at Harvey Mudd College, where I majored in physics and engineering. I studied for a Master’s at the Sloan School of Management at MIT with the hope of going back to Uganda to help the country grow. Idi Amin killed that option with his expulsion of Asians from Uganda in August 1972, just months before I was to graduate from MIT.

So, I took the first job that came my way via my thesis advisor at MIT, Glen Urban, who introduced me to United Nations Fund for Population Activities. I had done research for Glenn on a strategic planning model for an Atlanta Area Family Planning Council. I accepted the job at the UN as I thought that it could pave my way back to Uganda some day after Idi Amin fell.

It turned out that I could not pursue a career at the UN since I was a stateless person, who lacked the backing of a country. I was advised to leave the UN, find a country who will support my job application and then return to the UN, if I still wished to do so.

I took up a job at the New York Federal Reserve. I never went back to the UN except as a Member of the Advisory Council of UNCDF, 2021 -2023, and of the Concilium of UNDP’s Ratings Platform for African countries, 2024 to present.

GIT: How did your family end up in Jinja, Uganda, the town which is the source of the river Nile?

Kotecha: My father Kanjibhai was a top student, while growing up in Rajkot, India. He wanted to go to law school. But his father, a small shopkeeper in Mumbai, told him he could only afford to pay for one year of college.

In 1944, my father emigrated to Kenya, hoping to find a job via an uncle, who was working for the Madhvani group in Tanzania. My father did not get such a job. He ended up working as a proctor for a Lohana school dormitory in Kampala, Uganda.

In about a year, he moved to working as an accountant for Pitamber Motilal in Jinja, which is roughly fifty miles from Kampala. A decade later he moved to the Madhvani Group headquarters, in Jinja. He rose to be the Chief Accountant of Mulco Textiles, the largest textile operation in East Africa, owned by the group.

In 1945, he married my mother Lila. She was a teacher at the Old Kampala Secondary School. In Jinja she taught at primary schools until the family was kicked out by Idi Amin in 1972.

GIT: What was it like growing up as an Indian in a small town in Uganda? Other Indians there? Experience racism?

Kotecha: Life in Uganda was pleasant but segregated – the British and a few other Europeans lived in their luxurious homes. The Indians lived above their shops or near their employer’s offices and the native Ugandan in outlying urban and rural areas.

There were no formal boundaries between the races but there was de facto segregation of living quarters, schooling, and social interactions. The swimming club in Jinja, for instance, only admitted Europeans for a long time.

The best native Ugandan students went to the best, often Christian missionary, schools. The Indians had their own schools with very few students of other races - almost none till my last year or two in secondary school.

GIT: Assume the teachers at the schools in Uganda motivated you.

Kotecha: At Jinja Secondary, if you were a good student you were placed in the science stream. So, I ended up there. My father wanted me to study medicine, when I declined his first suggestion to become an accountant like him. At Aga Khan School, the way to prepare for medicine was to study advanced A level physics, biology, and chemistry, which I began to do.

But I got bored with biology and switched to math and wanted to study engineering. I was also good a general knowledge because I was a voracious reader. In 1966, I was awarded a scholarship to study engineering at the Harvey Mudd College in the US.

GIT: Did your father anticipate that the dictator Idi Amin would kick out the Indians in 1972? Where did your family move? Your reaction on the news?

Kotecha: No one anticipated that Idi Amin would come to power. Or that Indians would be kicked out by him. Many expected life would get more difficult for Indians as the governments in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania tried to Africanize the civil service and businesses.

The Indian population in Uganda declined from 72,000 in 1971 to something like 500, after the 90-day deadline for Asians to leave the country expired in November 1972.

My family moved to the United Kingdom, settling in Manchester, where my father, then 49, got a mid-level accounting job. He held the job till his retirement at 65. My two youngest brothers Jayendra and Shailesh also migrated to the UK with my dad and mother. The family joined one of my brothers Mukund who was pursuing an accounting program in London at the time.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1972, I was at MIT doing research for my thesis under Professor Urban. When the news broke on August 5, about the expulsion of Asians from Uganda, I was shocked and angry. I wrote a letter criticizing Idi Amin which was published in The Boston Globe; a copy of the letter is in my book. I was interviewed on national television on the issue.

I lost concentration and the completion of my thesis was delayed.

GIT: Was there any truth to Amin’s claim that Indians controlled most of Uganda’s wealth and were looting the country?

Kotecha: No truth at all. It was an outrageous lie. Indians accounted for one percent of Uganda’s seven million population. They could not possibly control all wealth or loot the country.

Indians did prosper and probably accounted for between 4%-8% of the Uganda’s GDP, per my estimates then. Their wealth was very visible in Jinja and Kampala where Indians were concentrated. The downtown areas looked like a town in India. Their conspicuous consumption attracted envy.

(Photo: Mahesh Kotecha shaking hands with a British visitor in Uganda, 1961.)

GIT: Do you visit Uganda? Are there many Indians? How are they viewed?

Kotecha: I am on the International Advisory Panel of East African Development Bank. So, I visit from time to time. I was last in Uganda in the summer of 2023, for example, to help the bank on a rating exercise.

Since the ouster of Idi Amin in 1979, and especially after Yoweri Museveni became President in 1986, Indians have been welcome. Many have migrated from India. Some of those who were expelled, or their children, have also returned. So, the Indian population is now about 20,000. In the meantime, Uganda’s population has exploded to about 50 million - quite shocking.

GIT: Who controls most businesses in Uganda today?

Kotecha: It is a mixed ownership structure with many state-owned enterprises. For instance, the oil and gas sector is being developed by the government. Also, businesses owned by Ugandans are active especially in agriculture and trade. The economy is dominated by agriculture.

Indians are active in light manufacturing and trading activities, much as they were in the past. Also, in hotels and other hospitality businesses. The industrial sector is small though. So, the issue of who controls it is less visible.

Indians are now generally well regarded in Uganda and account for the bulk of the formal tax- paying small and medium sized businesses. The Indian Association of Uganda claims that Indian businesses pay 65% of the total taxes collected in the country. But this is almost certainly exaggerated given that Uganda’s GDP is about $50 billion, with taxes being about 12-13% of GDP. Even if the Indian contribution is two percent of GDP, it would mean per capita income of each Indian is about $50,000 while it is about $1,000 for Ugandans.

GIT: Why is China able to play a major role in Africa?

Kotecha: China is following a mercantilist model. It wants to ensure it has a secure supply of natural resources, which are abundant in Africa. In return for the resources, China is lending billions to African countries. It is now the largest lender to the continent. China is funding railways, ports, and other infrastructure development.

GIT: Indian companies are selling medicines, automobiles, and petroleum products to Africa. Can India be a counterweight to China in Africa?

Kotecha: India’s trade with Africa is rising. But, since the Indian economy is a fraction of the size of the Chinese economy, India cannot match the resources China can deploy to meet its objectives in Africa.

Moreover, the Indian engagement with Africa is largely from the private sector, rather than government to government. So, it is more diffuse and less policy directed.

Global Indian Times: Why did you write The River Finds Its Course?

Kotecha: To describe how, after being stopped by Idi Amin from going back to Uganda to help with its development – my original career goal – I found a way to help Africa.

GIT: Your advice to a fresh graduate enamored by the glamour of working on Wall Street?

Kotecha: It is critical is to figure out what is likely to happen in financial markets, which will benefit clients, and see if there is a role for you to make it happen. That is glorious. For me, creating collateral debt obligations was a thrill. So was helping the International Finance Corporation get the highest credit rating. Also raising financing for Turkey and Israel. And creating the first emerging markets financial guarantee company and rating the African Development Bank for the first time for Standard and Poor’s.

There is more sweat than glamour on Wall Street. But if you sweat it out over time some glamour may come your way. It may be fleeting though as you are only as good as your next deal.

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