Award-winning property and construction solutions company Profica, is establishing an office in Zimbabwe, which will make it the eighth regional office for the company in Africa and beyond.
Leading the charge in Zimbabwe is Profica senior project manager, Tinashe Manyande, who has a special talent for building up Profica’s presence in Africa. Previously Manyande set up Profica’s Accra, Ghana office which has been operating for five years with an impressive track record and growing portfolio of clients.
Prior to heading off to Ghana, Manyande had worked as a project manager at the Profica head office in Johannesburg. Manyande says, “As a company with an entrepreneurial mindset, Profica looks for opportunities even in the most challenging jurisdictions. A key aspect in establishing our offices in Zimbabwe is to ensure that we know and understand the environment while also looking at the long-term property development potential. Large-scale property developments typically take between 24 and 36 months to complete; this simply means for a development and project management company; the work begins now.”
While Ghana’s buoyant property sector made the establishment of offices there a logical step for Profica, Zimbabwe poses a more challenging environment due to a troubled economy, elevated inflation, high unemployment levels and currency shortages.
Manyande says that Profica is well-established on the continent and has operated within many challenging contexts. “Thanks to embedded teams and a solid understanding of market needs, we are equipped to grasp opportunities as soon as they present themselves and we believe the same will hold true for Zimbabwe.”
The good news is that there are remedies in place for Zimbabwe, as evidenced by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on macroeconomic policies and structural reforms that can underpin a Staff Monitored Program (SMP). This aims to implement a coherent set of policies to facilitate a return to macroeconomic stability, a critical ingredient for a robust and functioning property sector.
Despite Zimbabwe’s current constrained environment, Manyande sees enormous potential in the future underpinned by stable economic fundamentals and driven by the fact that the country’s retail, commercial and industrial property sectors have been largely dormant over the past 20+ years.
Says Manyande, “Profica believes in the future of Zimbabwe and its people. Undoubtedly there’s a lot of work to do in Zimbabwe and as a leading development and project management firm we have never shied away from hard work – it’s what we do. We want to be leading the way in the delivery of exceptional world class projects for our various clients.”
