George Haggar was a creative entrepreneur and pioneer of agricultural industrialisation, whose piercing vision and tenacity built up a diversified group of companies. Although its origins are firmly rooted in the highlands of Western Equatoria, the group expanded in Northern Sudan in mid sixties of the last century. More enterprises and companies were incorporated in the fields of industry, agriculture, insurance, banking, commodities and services, known today as the ‘Haggar Group of Companies’.
George Haggar started a career in cultivation of tobacco, coffee and tea in Western and Eastern Equatoria. Perceiving the potential future of the natural resources in Equatoria, George Haggar combined agriculture with industry, creating employment opportunities in tea blending and cigarette factories. On the other hand, the farmers were provided with due incentives in the form of social services, and agricultural inputs to increase their returns. Thus, George Haggar achieved out-grower farming schemes and ‘the integrated rural development’ concept well before it was adopted by the World Bank in 1982 as a means of development.
Alluvial gold was mined in Nauru, near Kapoeta, in Eastern Equatoria, coupled with a soap factory in Juba. After the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, Haggar diversified into land, air and river transport.
Since the very beginning, in the early nineteenth thirties, George Haggar’s name was associated with charitable work, most especially in Southern Sudan where the business started and was officially incorporated in Juba in 1904.
