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Exeter MBA Trades Iraqi WMDs For Cheesecake

Café owner Muhammad Lameen Abdul-Malik was part of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning team at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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Muhammad Lameen Abdul-Malik in his Cape Town coffee shop, Escape Caffe

We just came across the extraordinary story of an Exeter MBA grad who worked on development of humanitarian projects for an international nuclear weapons expert, and is now running a coffee shop in down town Cape Town with his wife!

Exeter One Planet MBA alumni Muhammad Lameen Abdul-Malik has traded his Nobel Prize winning career in nuclear energy for cake-baking in Cape Town, South Africa.

Muhammad Lameen Abdul-Malik was programme management officer for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) when they won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. Their efforts ensured that nuclear energy was used safely and out of military hands. However Muhammad worked on the other side of the IAEA; he says "I was using nuclear science and development to design and implement development based projects to help developing countries address their poverty and humanitarian goals. So I helped build the first cancer disease treatment hospital in Lusaka, Zambia."

Muhammad says that IAEA inspections had proved that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction in 2003. "We were trying to stop the invasion of Iraq from happening. We knew there weren't any nuclear weapons, that's why the UN did not sanction the invasion... We were watching the (US and UK) invasion at our office, feeling so mad, so upset. So, when we received the award, the acknowledgement that we tried to stop it came as such a relief."

The businessman was born in Basel, Switzerland grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and moved to England with his family when he was 12. He studied economics at the University of Leicester and went on to the University of Exeter Business School for his MBA.

He then started working for the British Government before joining the UN’s IAEA in 2002. Muhammad stayed with them for seven years, managing operations in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Sudan, Sierra Leone and Mauritius.

When his contract expired, the adventurous 39-year-old set up his own cafe. His cheesecake is a best seller, and he claims to be an expert on keeping cakes moist right through!

Escape Caffé is definitely the only cafe with a framed Nobel Prize certificate by the door!