Out of Africa and in to save troubled Tigers

Within the next decade, Allam Marine is set to become the world's largest supplier of electricity generators, which means more starving people will get food, heat and light.

Mr Allam, the company's managing director, fled from Egypt to build a life in the UK because he was being persecuted for speaking out against President Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime in the 1960s.

Nasser is still an iconic figure to many in the Arab world. But to critics like Mr Allam, Nasser's government was a throwback to a repressive era.

Mr Allam told the Yorkshire Post in 2006: "Nasser was a dictator. He was very hard, not as hard as Saddam Hussein, but hard enough. He took Egypt backwards 30 to 50 years. I was a student and very outspoken at the time."

Fearing for his safety, he moved to Britain in 1968. At the time of leaving Egypt, he was working as an auditor and studying for a masters degree.

After arriving in Britain, he found work as an accountant and, in 1977, he was seconded to generator builder Tempest Diesels. Realising the potential of the business, he bought it in 1981, creating the holding company, Allam Marine.

Hull-based Allam Marine supplied generators to villages in Sri Lanka that were devastated by the tsunami of December 2004. The generators can provide power for a whole village, which means drugs and medicines can be stored in places far removed from large cities. They can also be used in an emergency when the mains electricity has been knocked out. In recent years, generators have been supplied to the Royal Palace in Dubai and Tottenham Hotspur FC.

In September, Mr Allam's son, Ehab, who is Allam Marine's operations director, predicted that the company's turnover would rise from 116m to 200m within the next two or three years.

Allam has also supplied a Heineken factory in Holland with generator sets, a fitting order for a firm which claims to reach the parts others cannot reach.