Investing in Zimbabwe’s Future: Benedict Mbanga on Mangwana Capital’s Inception and Strategy

Benedict Mbanga, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mangwana Capital, discusses the inception of the investment advisory and private equity firm, and explains why they decided to focus on investments in agriculture, mining, and tourism.

“Mangwana Capital started about six years ago. It was at a time when we saw a lot of opportunities in the market. More importantly, there was an opportunity because traditional pension funds and institutional investors did not seem to be investing in the productive sectors of the economy. They were investing largely in stock exchange type investments and property. Due to hyperinflation over the years, they had suffered very significant losses. We saw that as a massive opportunity to get pension funds involved in what we thought were the productive sectors of the economy. Our focus at the start was to leverage capital for the main areas that drive the country: agriculture, mining, and tourism, which we thought were the bedrock of the Zimbabwean economy. These areas had not received sufficient investment over the years. It was a massive opportunity to get the pension funds into those sectors. It was quite pioneering when we came into the market with this sort of offering. It was probably the first time that pension funds really got exposure to things like early-stage agriculture, mining, and so on – areas which they found equally exciting but just hadn’t gotten their minds around investing in. That’s how we came to the market and very quickly got a lot of support from large institutional investors. Now, six years later, we have 48 pension funds and institutional investors”, says Benedict Mbanga.

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