Who Is Hezi Bezalel? Israel's Businessman-Diplomat in Africa

Hezi Bezalel is an Israeli businessman and investment banker who has served as Rwanda's honorary consul in Israel since 2007, built on nearly four decades of banking and telecom activity across East Africa. Bezalel, born in Basra, Iraq, in 1951, developed personal ties with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and former Ugandan leadership while running investment banks in Nairobi and Kampala.^{Wikipedia biography of Hezi Bezalel}

Who is Hezi Bezalel?

Hezi Bezalel was born in Basra, Iraq, and moved to Israel with his family at age five, settling first in the Or Yehuda absorption camp and later in Ramat Gan. He served as a tank commander in the Yom Kippur War, then earned an economics degree and a master's from Tel Aviv University, where he taught alongside Professor Haim Ben Shachar before starting doctoral studies in London. Bezalel's path from an Iraqi-born immigrant family to a Tel Aviv University lecturer and London doctoral candidate set him apart from most of his East African banking peers, who typically came up through British or South African financial institutions rather than Israeli academia.

How did Bezalel start working in Africa?

Bezalel moved to Kenya in the 1980s to establish an investment bank in Nairobi on behalf of a British investment group. He built relationships with regional leaders including Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni during Uganda's World Bank-backed economic liberalization. That liberalization period opened Uganda's banking sector to foreign investors for the first time since the 1970s, and Bezalel positioned his Nairobi-based operation to take advantage of the opening years before most Israeli investors saw East Africa as a viable market.

In 1995, Bezalel purchased Nile Bank, a struggling Ugandan lender, as part of expanding his regional banking footprint. He rebuilt Nile Bank over the following decade, expanding its branch network and stabilizing its balance sheet during a period when several other Ugandan banks failed outright. Bezalel sold Nile Bank to Barclays in 2006 for a profit that established him as one of the more successful foreign investors in East African banking, and the sale gave Barclays a ready-made retail branch network it used to expand across Uganda.

What is Bezalel's diplomatic role?

Bezalel has served as Rwanda's honorary consul in Israel since 2007, a role that followed an earlier stint as Uganda's honorary consul in Israel from 1996 to 2007.^{Profile of Hezi Bezalel} Rwanda's state-run New Times newspaper credited Bezalel with building ties between Israel and Rwanda since arriving in the country in mid-1994. Bezalel was also reported to have worked behind the scenes to help defeat a 2017 UN resolution opposed by Israel, drawing support from only eight countries.^{Eurasia Review report on Bezalel's diplomatic activity}

What business interests does Bezalel hold?

Bezalel is founder and managing partner of Marathon Group, a firm with offices spanning the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, India, and Ethiopia. He has also held chairman roles at Mountaintop Productions and Carnie Capital Ltd. Bezalel owned Israeli telecom operator 018 Xfone, which took part in Israel's 2011 cellular tender before being disqualified for failing to provide a required guarantee, since most of his assets sat overseas.^{Globes report on Bezalel's telecom and fund activity} Xfone later operated its mobile service under the We4G brand before the company was sold to the Reichman family.^{Wikipedia entry on Xfone and its sale to the Reichman family}

In 2015, Bezalel partnered with UK investment firm Duet to launch the Duet Marathon fund, targeting up to $300 million for African investments with $100 million in overseas commitments already secured. The fund focused on mid-market companies across East and West Africa that were too large for microfinance but too small to access international capital markets directly, a gap Bezalel's regional relationships were well positioned to fill.

A 2011 Haaretz investigation reported that Bezalel made part of his fortune representing Israeli defense companies in Africa, adding that associates described him as working only with governments rather than private buyers.^{Haaretz investigation into Bezalel's business dealings} That defense-brokering work ran parallel to his banking and telecom ventures for much of the 1990s and 2000s, and associates have pointed to it as one reason Bezalel built such durable access to heads of state across the region. The same personal relationships that helped him acquire and later resell Nile Bank appear to have opened doors for the defense-sector introductions the Haaretz report described.

Bezalel's four-decade run across East African banking, telecom, and diplomacy makes him an unusual figure in Israeli business: a private investor whose most durable asset may be political access rather than a balance sheet. Few Israeli businesspeople have held an honorary consulship for one African country after already holding one for a neighboring state, and Bezalel's dual tenure with Uganda and then Rwanda reflects relationships built over decades rather than a single diplomatic appointment. His profile sits alongside other diaspora-linked operators covered in diaspora operators bridging Israel and the global economy.