From Ottoman army escape to Ghana success: The untold story behind the Kalmoni business dynasty

A family’s fear of losing its sons to military conscription in the Ottoman Empire set in motion a journey that would eventually produce one of Ghana’s longstanding automotive businesses, Japan Motors Trading Company. More than a century after his grandfather arrived in the Gold Coast, Salem Kalmoni has recounted how the family’s roots in Ghana can be traced to 1912, when the older generation left Lebanon for West Africa.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Personality Profile with Lexis Bill on Thursday, November 5, the Japan Motors chief executive said his grandfather, also named Salem Kalmoni, travelled to the then Gold Coast with his brother, Subhi, after their family became concerned about the possibility of further military conscription. He said the family’s fears followed the conscription of Subhi’s elder brother into the Ottoman army in Turkey, from which he never returned.

The development, he explained, prompted their parents to consider sending the remaining sons away before they too could be called up for military service. “One of the stories of why he [elder Salem Kalmoni] came here and his elder brother, Subhi, was that Lebanon was a province within the Ottoman Empire of Syria. His elder brother, Subhi, was drafted, or conscripted, into the Ottoman army in Turkey at the time.

And he never came back,” he recounted. “So then his parents were afraid. Wow, they have two or three other sons. ‘It’s going to be their turn; let’s send them off, okay?’ And they happened to have a maternal uncle here [in Ghana, then the Gold Coast],” he added. From trading shops to transport Mr Kalmoni said the family initially established trading businesses in Winneba and Swedru, with the brothers operating from the two towns for several decades before moving to Accra towards the late 1940s.

Their early commercial activities included the sale of provisions and spare parts, which later expanded into vehicle sales and transport. The family’s business gradually developed from small-scale trading into a transport operation, with the company eventually playing a role in moving cocoa from the country’s hinterland to the coast for export. Japan Motors’ official history traces the origins of the business to Kalmoni & Sons, established in 1920 by the late Salem Kalmoni.

Its transport operations became particularly active in the 1930s, supporting the cocoa trade by moving produce to coastal shipping points. Mr Kalmoni said the family initially bought vehicles from the United Africa Company (UAC), a British trading firm operating in the Gold Coast, and resold them to local customers on credit. That arrangement changed when his father, who joined the business as a teenager, began exploring ways to import vehicles directly rather than rely on purchases from local trading companies.

A letter that changed the business Mr Kalmoni said his father’s interest in reading international publications helped him identify an opportunity in Japan’s emerging automobile industry after the Second World War. He recalled that his father came across an advertisement in Newsweek indicating that Nissan, then marketing its vehicles under the Datsun name, was seeking distributors in Africa.

He subsequently wrote to the Japanese automobile manufacturer and secured a distributorship for the family business, then operating as S. Kalmoni & Sons. “That was as far back as 1958, okay? Under Kalmoni and Sons. It’s a sole proprietorship,” he said. The appointment marked a significant turning point for the family enterprise. In 1958, S. Kalmoni & Sons imported the first Japanese-made vehicle into Ghana, a Datsun, which later became part of the Nissan brand.

The expansion led to the establishment of Japan Motors Trading Company in 1962. The company was incorporated as a limited liability entity in 1965, providing a formal corporate structure for the growing business. Building a business across generations Japan Motors subsequently expanded beyond vehicle imports and sales into vehicle assembly. Its company history records the opening of an assembly operation at Tema in 1965, where Datsun pick-ups were assembled from imported components and bodies were built for Nissan-designed minibuses.

A second assembly line was added in 1970 for the Datsun 120Y saloon car. The business has since developed into a major player in Ghana’s automotive market, with interests in vehicle distribution, after-sales services and other transport-related products. Mr Kalmoni’s account offers a glimpse into the migration experience of his forebears and the commercial decisions that transformed a modest family trading operation into an established business spanning generations.