Farai Rwodzi is a Zimbabwean entrepreneur in financial services, agriculture, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, property, and mining.
Farai is a leading Zimbabwean entrepreneur with interests in various sectors of the economy including financial services, hospitality, industrial, property development and mining. He has been instrumental in the founding and/or transformation of several businesses and enterprises throughout the volatile economic environment that has characterized Zimbabwe since the late 1990s.
Farai Rwodzi is a Zimbabwean entrepreneur with significant investments in various sectors of the economy including financial services, agriculture, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, property development and mining. Farai is a chartered accountant by profession having served his articles of clerkship with Ernst & Young. He is the founder member of Interfin Holdings Limited incorporating Banking, Insurance and Stock broking businesses. He is currently a shareholder and a director of several listed and unlisted companies including the following:
Farai is shareholder, chairman and director of several listed companies including:
Apex Corporation of Zimbabwe Limited – a diversified manufacturer of engineering products, including cast iron products, mining equipment and grinding mills.
Meikles Limited – a diversified hotel and retail agro conglomerate, dual listed in London and Zimbabwe.
Phoenix Consolidated Industries Limited – manufacturer of brushware, bathroom fittings, protective materials, clothing and wire products.
Gullivers Consolidated Limited – manufacturer of heavy engineering products such as railway wagons and steel fabrication products.
Interfin Financial Services – established in 1999, comprising of 4 core businesses, banking, term, life and health insurance and stockbroking and asset management. Interfin Bank merged with CFX in June 2010 to become a leading merchant and commercial bank in Zimbabwe. Farai no longer holds an executive role in the Interfin group of companies, but is non executive Chairman of Interfin Financial Services which is listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange of which Interfin Banking Corporation is a subsidiary.
Aico – has diversified over the past 5 years from major player in the cotton sector to the FMCG business (with 49% purchase of Olivine from HJ Heinz in 2007). Aico owns 50.9% of SeedCo, and purchased Exhort Enterprises, vegetable packers, in 2006.
SeedCo – the largest seed producer in Southern Africa with branches in Zambia, Botswana, Kenya and South Africa.
Savannah – is the leading cigarette manufacturing company in Zimbabwe. Having started operating in 2002 as a threshing company, they are the proud manufacturers of Pacific, Pegasus and Branson families of brands. Headquartered in Zimbabwe, they are also found directly and indirectly in South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and DRC.
African Sun Limited (Regional) – with properties and management contracts in southern, central and west Africa.
Dawn Properties – property company on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.
Altfin Holdings Limited – holding company to a short term insurer and life assurance company.
Duration Gold Limited – is a Zimbabwe focused, private, emerging gold producer and explorer. Duration currently has a global resource base of 4.2 million oz of gold and is licensed to market and sell its gold on the open market.
Africom – is a Zimbabwean provider of telecommunications services, providing solutions in mobile and fixed wireless telephony and internet access.
James North – manufacturer and retailer of protective clothing.
Zimbabwe Alloys Limited – leading producer of high and low carbon Ferro Chrome as well as Ferro Silicone Chrome.
He is also a member of the board of stewards of the Mashonaland Turf Club which operates both the race courses in Zimbabwe as well as related betting operations and the Lotto in Zimbabwe.
Farai is on the Parents Liaison Committee of St Johns College and Parents Teachers Association of Peterhouse Girls School.
About Farai
I believe in Zimbabwe…it’s truly the last frontier…it’s the only place I want to be, Zimbabwean through and through, it has never occurred to me to live anywhere else
What drives me is the search for opportunity and creating long term relationships which translate these opportunities to wealth/value over the next several decades, money per se does not excite me.
I feel as if I am the luckiest person in the world, to be here, now, with the best people in the world, in a country that must surely possess the greatest potential in the world.
I travel widely in search of opportunity, including to the US, Europe, where I have business partners in Spain, as well as within Africa and to the East.
My odyssey is an annual outing for meditation and spiritual upliftment, being a firm believer that we are, after all, ”spiritual beings having a temporary human experience” .
I am passionate about what I do; what do I do, you might ask, I run Farai Rwodzi Inc, an investment vehicle which has a number of interests in most sectors of the Zimbabwe’s diverse economy.
The country’s resource and mineral wealth are stupendous; how to unlock value, responsibly, equitably and profitably , for the benefit of all Zimbabweans, is what drives me.
At 40, I believe time is on my side to quietly do my homework, patiently cultivating the conditions that will bring about the necessary conditions for Zimbabwe’s recovery. My primary tool is influencing.
What matters to me is whether I can live with what I do. I talk to people from all walks of life, of all persuasions and convictions. Each time I am left with the enduring view that we all have something to offer-we can all bring something valuable to the party. All people are yearning to be understood; they want to relate to others, and seek to be accepted for who they are.
We have a public persona that we must project, while at the same time we have our private persona, which often is who we really are…this private, little known person is the one I seek in each relationship I cultivate – that is the level at which we get the most out of each other…but peeling off each layer takes time!
I truly believe that Zimbabweans do not spend enough time really talking to each other. We are quick to judge and exclude. We do not seek to listen and understand another’s world view. We place each other in boxes; this compartmentalisation kills cooperation and collaboration. Who suffers – we do. This is an over-simplification, I know, but we have to get over the past, some time, and focus our energy on the future; not 2 or 5 years from now, but decades hence.
We Zimbabweans are the turn around agent, the catalyst for our country’s recovery – no one else.
We have to accept that there are certain things that may not happen in our lifetime, but we can, and must, set the preconditions for them to be a reality in the future.
Sport – I was left wing and wore the “famous” no 11 jersey for Churchill Boys High School, Harare, 1st XV. I still hold the second fastest time for 100m sprint in Zimbabwe, set in 1989.
Hobbies – meditation, reading
Culture – love to watch my children perform, across their various areas of interest
Vision – to leave the world a better place than I found it
The principles / values you live by – live life with passion, make a difference
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