He grew up in a world where doing business was a foreign concept and capitalism a dirty word. This was the world of Mozambique in the 70s and 80s where Moreira Chonguica’s worldview was formed by the regime of socialist-communist leader Samora Machel, who favored state-owned corporations over the private sector.
“The word business did not apply to me because of the context I grew up in. I never thought about business,” says Chonguica, 35, when thinking back to his youth.
So when he started playing the saxophone as a teenager, it was meant to be a hobby, not a career. It took him many years until he realized that he could make a decent living from his passion. Today, he is actively marketing himself as a brand, by associating with big corporations like Woolworths and Vodacom.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1159" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/moreira_chonguica_20120804_423-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
Chonguica always felt at home in the world of jazz. Every afternoon after school, almost religiously, he visited the local library to browse through leading jazz magazines like Downbeat and Jazz Times, learning about the international world of music. He came to know about festivals, master classes, the music business and the evolution of sound technology.
“I thought, ‘Hello, there is something here that I am missing.’ I started questioning myself and I understood, ‘Ah, music is a business!’” he recalls.
Reading musicians’ biographies became his obsession. Chonguica wanted to find out all he possibly could about the person behind the voice, the business behind the musician.
“From watching music videos on TV, I always thought being a musician was just fun. But when I started reading about the successful artists of that time, like Bryan Adams, Sting, Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, Run-D.M.C., Vanilla Ice. It dawned on me that they are musicians, but they are also companies,” he says.
That’s what he wanted to achieve, as well, one day, he thought.
Chonguica did not only look behind the scenes of music. He also studied the careers of famous sportsmen like basketball star Michael Jordan and the business success stories of multinational corporations like fast food chain McDonalds.
“Michael Jordan created a fingerprint, an identity, a lifestyle. I understood that it’s not only about your success as a sportsman. It’s the way you talk, the way you dress, what you drink, with whom you collaborate. My perspective had changed completely. I started looking at music the same way as at sport,” he explains.
One day the penny dropped: he had to turn himself into a trademark.
But until then, Chonguica had a long road ahead. How was he going to grow his fledgling music career into a thriving business? Step one, was to leave poverty-stricken Mozambique, which had just emerged from more than two decades of bloody internal conflict. He enrolled as a music student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa in 1997. Living for the first time in a market-driven economy, Chonguica woke up to a sobering reality: combining his dream of being a jazz artist with making money would be extremely difficult.
“I suddenly realized that it would have made much more sense to study economics or engineering or architecture. I got a fright. I thought I have no future. I didn’t want to be just another poor musician.”
In a panic, he played with the thought of de-registering from his studies. It was a drastic decision for someone whose relationship with music had begun early on in his life, pretty much before he could walk or talk. His father, a medical doctor who ran the national health ministry’s pharmacy department, was an ardent music lover. The turntable in the family’s living room in Maputo’s Polana neighborhood hardly stood still.
“My father had a huge collection of LPs. Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Johnny Clegg, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Pink Floyd, the Police and lots of instrumental jazz. Every evening when he came home from work, he put the system on loud,” says Chonguica.
Chonguica, the boy, listened, and his devotion to music grew. He soon attended a state-subsidized music school where he was introduced to the saxophone—an instrument he never put down again. It was this deep-seated relationship with music that made him years later, as a student, change his mind once again.
“I realized that a musician is who I am. I decided that I have to make it work. I have to change the game. I cannot just play saxophone, I have to turn it into a business.”
And so he graduated with a degree in jazz performance and ethnomusicology and started to play and tour with top South African jazz artists, such as Jimmy Dludlu and Alvin Dyers.
“I purposefully attached myself to the big names, toured with them and played at the top jazz festivals in the world,” says Chonguica.
“It’s like when you’re a soccer player, you want to play with Real Madrid,” he says in reference to the Spanish football club, one of the top performing clubs in the world.
A trip to the United States in 2000 opened his eyes to the world of music even further.
“I saw musicians making a lot of money, getting the right publicity, becoming famous. It was ‘wow’. My perspective of how the music business works totally changed,” he says.
His role model became Quincy Jones, who over five decades in the entertainment industry not only excelled as a jazz trumpeter and performer but became one of the top record producers of all time, working with pop icons like Michael Jackson.
“Quincy Jones is my hero because he shaped and changed the world with music. He built an empire,” says Chonguica.
Back in South Africa, Chonguica changed tack. He didn’t want to be a member of someone else’s band anymore. He wanted to become an artist in his own right, build his own brand. He teamed up with Woolworths and was a celebrity model for the retailer’s winter men’s collection. He became a brand ambassador for Laurentina Premium, an SABMiller beer, Vodacom Mozambique and Mozambican airline LAM, and has collaborated with Nokia, J&amp;B and Mozambique’s largest commercial bank BCI.
“I am marketing myself differently [from other jazz artists]. I am creating concepts of myself, buzz words. Someone will say ‘I know that guy. I want to book him’,” he explains.
He also created an independent recording label, Morestar Entertainment, and produced several albums of conceptual African fusion of jazz, cleverly keeping tabs on his musical output as well as his earnings: “I own everything I do.” Three South Africa Music Awards (SAMA) and another two nominations later, Chonguica’s records can be downloaded from all major music websites, like iTunes, SoundCloud or ReverbNation, giving Chonguica a global presence.
But it’s the branding that has kept Chonguica financially afloat much more than income generated from performances or music sales, especially since the global financial crisis hit in 2008.
“The first thing that’s affected in an economic downturn is entertainment. There are less jazz festivals, reduced budgets for musicians. I came to the conclusion that I can’t depend on festivals and gigs to make money. It’s not sustainable,” he says.
Chonguica’s advice to young musicians: Create our own concepts. Brand your band, young man.

Brand Your Band,  Young Man

In 2006, the Mozambican president’s youngest daughter took the leadership of the family’s company—Focus 21 Management and Development, Ltd (Gestão e Desenvolvimento, Lda). The company, which focuses on business consulting, engineering, logistics and the mining sector, is currently valued at more than $5 million.
“There is an ongoing specialized financial reassessment of assets such as buildings, land, interests in diverse areas such as agribusiness, ICT and logistics in Mozambique,” says Guebuza.
Guebuza’s involvement in the company dates back to 2001 when her father changed the company’s shareholder structure. Both her brothers, Armando Ndambi Guebuza and Mussumbuluko Armando Guebuza, also joined Focus 21.
The Guebuza family business was born almost two decades ago. In recent years, it has established partnerships with companies such as Star Times, targeting the market for cable television, and Cervejas de Moçambique (Beers of Mozambique).
At Star Times Media, in which Focus 21 holds a 15% interest, Valentina Guebuza serves as the chief executive officer. The company was launched a year ago in Mozambique with the majority shareholder being the Chinese Star Times International. With an investment of more than $88 million, the joint venture aims to become the market leader in cable television in Mozambique, a country that faces the challenge of migrating from analogue to digital by 2015.
The national and foreign press also highlights business partnerships established between Focus 21 and Mozambican state-owned enterprises, such as the Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique (Ports and Railways of Mozambique).
The professional profile of the three young entrepreneurs and their relationship with the heads of state of Mozambique and Angola must help.
During her childhood, Guebuza liked “to play with dolls and play ball” with other kids in Maputo, where she grew up. She adds that she had an education based on the principle of responsibility and helped the family with household chores, such as washing dishes and cooking. For Guebuza, the education she received from her parents was important in the development of her personality. In her interview with FORBES AFRICA she appeared to be an extremely modest person.
“Today, I understand what my parents always told us, that the family is the foundation of our stability; emotionally and professionally,” she says, adding that she always had a “very good” relationship with all her family members.
When she graduated in civil engineering, Guebuza had no idea that she would play an active role in the business world.
“I always wanted to be independent and I fought for it. In 2001, I started working in a restaurant. I also did secretarial work and when I was in my last year of university I started an internship at a consulting firm in civil engineering, where I gained practical experience in my field,” she says.
With her ingression into the leadership of Focus 21, Guebuza had to put on hold the Masters degree she was doing as she says the family business takes up all her time. She says she works “24/7”.
“I do not know if I am an enterprising person, but surely I have to bring in results to the group I manage. So I must split myself in two, losing nights thinking about solutions and projects that add value to our market and also to bring positive results for the company,” she says.
Being the youngest daughter of the president, Guebuza is a symbol of success in a society mostly made up of young people. She was born during the period in which Mozambique was no longer under Portuguese colonial rule, yet had plunged into civil war. The 1980s were particularly striking in the life of the entrepreneur, who still remembers the trips around the country under military escort as well as the numerous power outages.
Given her youth, Guebuza has been associating with organizations that attempt to promote entrepreneurship and employment among young Mozambicans. In the social field, this is one of the major topics to which she has dedicated herself. Low-cost housing for families is another one of her passions.
“I think we are a privileged generation in a way. We did not live in the time when we were oppressed. Some of us lived throughout part of the civil war period, others have no idea what those moments were all about,” she says.
In 2010, she became involved in the Business Fair, held in Maputo. The initiative’s main objective is to promote “a space where young entrepreneurs can exchange ideas and experiences”.
That same year, Guebuza received an invitation to join the New Leaders for Tomorrow forum, held by the Swiss organization Crans-Montana. From the relationships established with the organization, she joined the Africa Foundation 2.0 in 2011, which connects young African leaders from 40 nations to design strategies for integrated social development for the continent.
Another sign of media recognition that Guebuza has gathered at the international level was her participation in the last G20 meeting, held in Paris in October. Only 15 African Foundation 2.0 members were invited.
With an annual growth of 7.5%, Mozambique seems to be one of the most promising economies in Africa. The enormous agricultural potential, in parallel with natural resources such as gas or coal, have placed the watchful eyes of investors on the young African economy.
“Over the next 10 years, I see my country being given more weight in terms of decisions to be taken globally,” she says.
As a “dissatisfied” person and one who likes to live each day in an “intense” way, Guebuza believes that these are times of “great enthusiasm” for Mozambique. She is proud of the importance that her nation is beginning to gather on an international level and expects that the country’s economic success will result in the improvement of Mozambique’s social indicators.
The Next Isabel dos Santos? 
Often, journalists compare Guebuza to the Angolan entrepreneur, Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the president of Angola José Eduardo dos Santos. According to Forbes, she is worth at least $170 million and is considered to be the most powerful and richest woman in her country and among the richest in Africa. She was described by the Portuguese newspaper Público as: “…a good business woman, extremely dynamic and intelligent, also a professional and friendly.” 
Since 2008, she has held interests in telecommunications, media, retail, finance and the energy industry, both in Angola and in Portugal. Her commercial interests include oil, diamonds and shares in the Angolan cement company, Nova Cimangola

The Millionaire Princess

It has been a lonely few months in Mozambique. In the dim dawn, before the sun grips the rugged streets of Maputo, Juliano Maquina, runs in the hope of Olympic glory.
In many ways Maquina feels left behind, the last man standing. He is the only Olympic athlete who has trained in the meagre gyms of Mozambique–while his compatriots tone up in well-heeled countries around the world. If he can fight to become the last man standing in London, it would all have been worth it and could boost boxing in the land of his birth.
Maquina is the first boxer from Mozambique to qualify for the Olympics for nearly 20 years. He weighs 49kgs and will fight in the light-flyweight division.
The fight for Maquina began long ago. Every morning, six days-a-week, he trains in a basketball court in Maputo with no ring, no ropes, not even a punch bag–the lot of a sport starved of cash. Against the odds, the boxer with the baby face stays fit and tries to improve his technique ahead of being thrown to the finest young fighters in the world.
<div id="attachment_939" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-939" class="wp-image-939 size-large" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/lucas_sinoia_20120516_19-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Lucas Sinoia</div>
“My dream is to make it to three Olympics and three world championships and take silver in two of them. My family have supported me and I hope that a successful boxing career will provide for them,” says Maquina.
At the very least, the 18-year-old southpaw has time on his side and clearly the stomach for a fight. Maquina had to battle hard at the qualifiers in Morocco to make it to the Olympics. Three boxers fought for Mozambique, Maquina was the only one to qualify in Casablanca; by contrast Angola sent six boxers, none qualified; South Africa sent nine, two qualified. One hundred and fifty four boxers competed from 30 African countries.
Maquina also has a good man in his corner, Lucas Sinoia, who fought twice for Mozambique at the Olympics.
Sinoia, aged 45, was born in the rural Mutarara Province in Tete in the remote north-western corner of Mozambique, and fought at 67kgs in the welterweight division. He was the champion of Mozambique between 1985 and 1996 and worked in a bread factory, to keep boxing, because the pay was so poor.
The answer to penury came from the barracks. Sinoia joined the army, which gave him the money and facilities to train. The army has long been a cradle of the sweet science. Legend has it that Mozambique’s first president, Samora Machel, used to punch sandbags for fun, on visits to his troops and was ringside at the big fights.
Sinoia thrived in the army and won a bucket load of medals leading to his qualification for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, as the youngest member of the national team, aged 22. He lost in the second round of the welterweight tournament to Spaniard, Javier Martínez, after getting a bye in the first. Robert Wangila, of Kenya, won the gold–the first Kenyan to win gold for his country in a sport other than athletics. Wangila, who fought 22 professional fights, died, aged just 26, from his injuries after a severe beating in the ring in Las Vegas in 1994.
Sinoia also qualified for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta where he built his reputation as a highly disciplined boxer.
The glory days in Atlanta were few, as Sinoia was beaten 11-6 in the first round by, Vadim Mezga, of Belarus. He retired in 1998.
Nearly 20 years, later Sinoia has put his own money up to start the Academia de Boxe Lucas Sinoia, in Maputo, where he coaches aspiring boxers, as young as eight. He is looking for the next heavyweight sensation, but has spent the last few months training the young Maquina.
“I have great hopes for Juliano, but fear that he will have a hard time. Apart from a small trip to Cuba and to Morocco for the qualifiers, he has no other international experience,” says Sinoia.
Together with trainer Braulio Montiel, from Cuba, Sinoia shares the job of coaching the national boxing team.
The Cuban connection is an old and powerful one. It began when Joao Caldeira, a businessman and President of the Mozambique Boxing Federation, went to teach Portuguese in Cuba in 1978. He stayed for five years and arranged for three Mozambicans, including Sinoia, to be trained in the Caribbean country which produced Olympic gold medallists such as the late Teofilo Stevenson. All three returned to become Mozambican champions.
The Cuban dash in the ring appears to be rubbing off on the young Maquina. He says his role model is the former Olympic gold medallist featherweight, Yuriorkis Gamboa, who is now unbeaten in 21 professional fights.
Sinoia and Monteil want to concentrate the meagre money, given by government to boxing in Mozambique, on training a small group of determined and talented fighters. They are looking to business for money to help the impoverished sport that could bring medals.
A successful international boxer could help coax this money from companies and revive what was once a glory game in Mozambique and a way out of poverty for many of the country’s poor.
In the 1960s and 70s, boxing pulled huge crowds and money in Mozambique. The hotbed of boxing with the seaside town of Beira and thousands took trains from all over Mozambique, as well as South Africa and Zimbabwe, for the big fights.
Money flowed through Mozambican boxing. The bets were big and boxers from across southern Africa travelled to reap the rewards of the ring.
These days of money and thunder may be a far cry from the quiet build up to the Olympics, on a shoestring, for Maquina, but there is hope. Already the victory in Casablanca has been hailed for putting Mozambique back on the boxing map.
Maybe the slender teenager, with the baby face and the sneaky jab, could stun the world in London. After all, the oldest saying in the history of boxing is the bigger they are the harder they fall.

The Lonely Last Man Standing

It was fear more than ambition that drove Venancio Matusse to become one of Mozambique’s richest people. Terror swept through the mind of Matusse as he stood helplessly watching his baby son fight for breath on a December morning in 1997.
The diagnosis from the doctor was grim. Little Venancio Junior needed heart surgery and that meant an expensive mercy trip across the border to South Africa. The doctors who could save the child’s life were at the private Sunninghill Hospital, in Johannesburg, a seven-hour drive away.
“I had to try to find money for the surgery. My friends in private business lent me the money, but when I came back I realized l could not pay for the health of my kids; my job did not provide for that, so it set me thinking,” he says.
Until then 48-year-old Matusse, who was born in the wilds of Gaza Province, lived a quiet life in academia at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, where he lectured in engineering.
“My training as an engineer and teaching at university gave me a way of looking into opportunities. For me, an opportunity is a challenge.”
The first challenge for Matusse was to set up in business before he left the security of a university post. As an engineer, his skills were in demand, as the economy of Mozambique began to stir after decades of stagnation. There were consultancy jobs on offer in Maputo and Matusse worked on everything from quarries to roads and railways.
“I decided in those early days that the result of my consultancy was going to be shares instead of money. I needed capital more than I needed cash,” he says.
The breakthrough came when Matusse became one of 42 shareholders who make up an elite group of consultants called Mozambique Gestores, specializing in big projects like ports.
Since then, Matusse has built up an impressive portfolio of interests in companies employing 300 people and turning over tens of millions of dollars. Among them: Paper Soft, an IT solutions company; engineering company BMG; a 45% stake in management system solutions companies Socarto and Ambisig; and a partnership with a Portuguese consulting company.
“I have a problem with routine. I acquire companies and let my partners run them,” he says.
It was another glorious Maputo morning when we met at the Polana Hotel, perched on a cliff overlooking the deep blue Indian Ocean.
The Polana, with its wrought-iron staircases, large chandeliers and white pillars, always puts me in mind of the Titanic. It is the hotel where the deals are done these days. With a glance around the luxurious lounge, you can pick out the tables where business people from Mozambique are cutting deals with foreign investors.
Matusse is fresh from a memorable Friday night out in Maputo. For a good night out in Africa, the capital
of Mozambique must be at the top
of the list.
“I work hard and I play hard,” he says with a smile.
We sit down around the marble table. Matusse comes across as unassuming, softly spoken and keen to tell his story—a man bold enough to talk of his connections with President Armando Guebuza.
“You will find him in my companies, but from long before he was president,” he says breezily.
Fernando Lima, a journalist based in Maputo, believes President Guebuza is encouraging a new breed of entrepreneurs like Matusse in Mozambique.
“The president likes smart people and young people with ideas. What we are seeing is the emergence of an educated and committed black elite,” says Lima.
Another journalist, who asked not to be named, says: “Matusse is close to the president, has influence and can open doors for people.”
Matusse himself is concentrating on business and looking to the future. In 2002, he launched his own investment and consultancy company, Mutxisso, named after his great-grandfather. The company concentrates on attracting investment and supplying skills in projects for what is arguably Mozambique’s greatest need.
“We need infrastructure. The weak points in Mozambique are infrastructure and training.
It hasn’t always been plain sailing,” he says.
“I have made mistakes in choosing people. I always try to retrain people if I can, which is not always the best option.
“I have also made mistakes in projects. Once I had to turn around two factories, both making spare parts for locomotives. The factories had only one customer: CFM, the national freight railway company of Mozambique. That proved a problem to have all our eggs in one basket… I think all of this has taught me perseverance; you have to be focused on what you want.”
Matusse is reputed to be one of the richest people in Mozambique. He says he doesn’t know what he is worth; merely that he doesn’t owe anyone anything.
And what of young Venancio Junior, the sickly son who set off his father’s remarkable entrepreneurial career?
He is now 15 years old, healthy, a footballer and as strong as a horse.
“One day he says he wants to be an engineer, and the next day he comes to me and says he wants to be a footballer,” chuckles Matusse.
“He is going to be an engineer; I just haven’t told him yet!”

The Fear That   Made A Fortune

Nostalgia is a thing of the future as far as one of the newest old radio stations in Africa is concerned. The breezy sound of LM Radio in Mozambique is back with a vengeance, with plans to broadcast across the whole of Southern Africa.
LM Radio was about the dream as much as the sound. Hopeful songs of love and laughter from LM, Lourenco Marques—as Maputo was known in those days—the city of palm trees, prawns, piri piri, sunshine and sand. The Monte Carlo of Southern Africa where smart yellow taxis ferried holidaymakers through the wide pristine streets of the city to the aroma of ground coffee and fresh bread.
This was the Mozambique of the 1960s and 70s where LM Radio made its name. There is a generation of boardroom executives in Southern Africa who grew up listening to LM Radio, under the bed sheets or in a boarding school dormitory. LM Radio had that allure of the underground as it played records the national broadcasters of neighboring countries refused to touch. Out of the African night came the sound of the Beatles—banned in South Africa after John Lennon said they were bigger than Jesus—The Who, Herman’s Hermits, Pink Floyd with a sprinkling of home-grown pop. Many who were youngsters in that era can’t remember exactly what the national broadcasters were playing, but recall it was difficult to dance to.
<div id="attachment_656" style="width: 228px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-656" class="wp-image-656 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Gerry-Wilmot-in-Office-during-seige-218x300.jpg" alt="" width="218" height="300" />Gerry Wilmot with a shrivelled orange in the wake of the seige</div>
It was this frustration with the establishment that led to the birth of LM Radio in 1936. Advertising man, GJ McHarry, from Durban in South Africa, wanted to hear jazz on the radio. The South African Broadcasting Corporation refused to touch it, so McHarry headed north to set up a station at Radio Clube de Moçambique.
The new station hosted big band music and variety shows before studio audiences. It brought the sparkle of tinsel town, with Latin dash, into the dowdy farms, barrack rooms and mining camps of Southern Africa. It prospered in the 1950s and became hip in the 1960s and 70s. Heavens, even young Cliff Richard paid a visit to the station that played his records. By 1969, it was estimated nearly nine million people, in South Africa alone, were tuning in.
A symbol of its success was that, in 1972, the SABC bought LM Radio for a massive R60 million—a fortune back then. The National Party government was twitchy about independent radio stations broadcasting from outside South Africa’s borders. The station struggled on through the turmoil of Mozambique’s painful independence before it closed on October 12, 1975 with a simple announcement on air saying: “For us it has been 39 happy years.”  The new government in Mozambique took over the station to air educational broadcasts.
Fast forward to September 21, 2010 and radio engineer, Chris Turner, and his team were putting the finishing touches to a radio transmitter fixed to the top of a 10-story concrete block in Maputo, ahead of the first full broadcast of the revived LM Radio.
The tiny studio was also in the tower block, but has since moved to small offices in the basement of Hotel Cardoso.
“The lifts in the tower block didn’t work very well,” says Turner.
LM Radio is Turner’s dream and radio is his life. He grew up in Cape Town with one ear fixed to the radio and was an avid fan of LM Radio.
“They played Elvis, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and you didn’t hear it anywhere else. Everyone in my age group has a memory,” he says.
Turner started a pirate radio station from his bedroom by the time he was 12. The police came to his home and closed down the station three times, but that didn’t deter Turner who grew up to train as a radio engineer.
To follow his dream, Turner and his wife sold property to raise the $3 million capital to open the station. It wasn’t easy; there were hours spent poring over Mozambique’s often pedantic bureaucracy.
The reward was that LM Radio is expected to break even in its first year, ahead of forecasts. The target is to achieve R12 million ($1.5 million) turnover in five years. It is taking advertising from South African supermarket chains to corner shops.
“We are about quarter of the way there,” smiles Turner.
LM Radio is banking on a large English-speaking population in Mozambique, largely South Africans; plus it broadcasts on medium wave in Lesotho, the Free State and in Johannesburg through community station Radio 2000. The station claims between 55,000 and 75,000 listeners a week, with a target of 125,000. Turner plans to apply to broadcast in Zimbabwe and Zambia, followed by the rest of Southern Africa where he thinks there is an even bigger pool of people who want to listen to Elton John and Abba.
“I think there is something in the music of the 1970s. It is feel good music, happy music. A lot of people write and tell us that our music lifts them up,” says Turner.
When LM Radio was reborn, in keeping with the theme of the station, there were blasts from the past. DJs, who were veterans of the original station, went back on air as if it where yesterday, rather than the last century, that they signed off. Reg de Beer, a veteran presenter who died in January, came back as did Nick Megens, a Dutch national, who had got into broadcasting at Radio Clube while working at his father’s company in Maputo.
Megens, who lives in Johannesburg, survived one of the most fraught chapters in the LM Radio story. It all began one spring morning with a frantic phone call from station manager, Gerry Wilmot, telling him to come into Radio Clube as soon as possible.
Megens was living on Catembe Island, just off the coast, and took the ferry over to Maputo. As he jumped into a taxi he knew this was no ordinary day as thousands of people running in panic through the streets of the capital buffeted the vehicle. This was September 7, 1974. I Shot the Sheriff by Eric Clapton was number one on the day Portugal signed the Lusaka Accord handing the liberation movement, FRELIMO, control of Mozambique within a year. It was a shock to many of the white Portuguese after more than four centuries of colonial rule.
“People were giving away the keys of their houses on the streets and later that day I saw people at the airport, holding one suitcase, weeping,” says Megens.
When Megens got to Radio Clube he found it bristling with guns. Armed white militia had taken over the radio station because they feared the Portuguese, or FRELIMO, may use it for propaganda. The show went on; for 10 days Megens broadcast with a couple of gun-toting militia men at his back.
“All I could think of was, ‘what happens if one of these guys goes to sleep and his gun goes off, the bullets are going to fly around the room?’”
The militia brought in supplies to their prisoners on air. The only problem was that it was just oranges and cigarettes and Megens didn’t smoke. His stomach rumbled while cartons of cigarettes piled up against his wall. Station manager, Wilmot, demanded the newspaper photograph him holding a shriveled orange in protest.
When the Portuguese Army ended the occupation by storming the radio station they lobbed in a couple of hand grenades.
“It is not a nice sound,” says Megens.
Nearly 40 years on, LM Radio is a nice sound and that is maybe why it has overcome closure, political chaos, civil war and scores of desperate men with guns.

Guns Could Not Silence The  Romantic Voice Of The African Night

It’s a warm, overcast, spring afternoon in Julius Nyerere Avenue in the heart of Maputo amid the hooters and rattle of people driving home from work through the potholes. On the side of the road in front of brand spanking new bank headquarters, a group of urbane bankers chat quietly and shift from foot to foot in expectation.
The building used to be a hotel as rundown as the streets that run by it. “This was a ruin; now look at it,” says one of the senior managers proudly. A small curious crowd has gathered. The word is out that one of the richest men in the world is about to arrive. A car sweeps in like a summer breeze off Maputo Bay; a group of people jump out. “Which one is he?” says someone nearby.
<div id="attachment_147" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-147" class="size-large wp-image-147" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/290-647-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Banco Unico branch in Maputo, Mozambique; 15 September 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
Closing the door behind him is the man himself, dressed in grey suit, with a red-striped shirt and matching tie; Américo Amorim—the 212th richest man on earth, according to FORBES in 2010, worth an estimated $4 billion. With a gentle smile and handshake, he blends into the waiting crowd of bankers and could be one of them. If you are looking for a billionaire who wears his eminence lightly, look no further than this man; a man who not only admires Nelson Mandela, but also appears to subscribe to the great man’s approach to humility.
Make no mistake, there is an iron will behind the smile and a reputation in Maputo—born of his latest deal—as a tough negotiator. Amorim, who made a fortune from putting corks into the world’s bottles, was in Maputo to see where a chunk of his fortune has gone. The 77-year-old entrepreneur’s empire is in a joint venture with Portuguese conglomerate Visabeira, which owns 61% of Mozambique’s newest bank, Banco Unico, which has opened in Maputo with $20 million in initial equity share capital. The remainder, aside from a small stake for management, is owned by Mozambique-based private companies and pension funds.
<div id="attachment_166" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-166" class="wp-image-166 size-large" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/290-76-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />High-rise construction in Maputo, Mozambique; 14 September 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
Amorim, speaking through aninterpreter, is not fazed by his lofty FORBES ranking: “I am indifferent to that. My passion is to build companies&#8230; My happiness is to be busy.” Amorim has certainly been busy for almost his entire adult life. He took over the management of the family cork business at the tenderage of 18, when his parents died; from that moment, according to his close colleagues, Amorim has worked at least 12 hours a day in more than half a century as an entrepreneur. The Amorim Group has its roots in a small family cork business started by Amorim’s grandfather in 1870. The business is based in the tiny town of Mozelos, 19 kilometers from Porto, near the Portuguese forests, which hold more than half of the world’s cork. The young Amorim took to the family business with a will and travelled the world to sell cork.
In 1958, he journeyed to the then unfashionable Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc to strike deals. It made his company Portugal’s biggest exporter to Eastern Europe. In 1962, Amorim invested 75,000 euros ($102,000) in the business, to modernize and mechanize; the company consolidated cork production in Portugal and down the years expanded into Spain, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Sardinia.
Nearly 60 years on from the young Amorim’s first day in the office, the family empire declared sales of 457 million euros ($621 million) in April and posted profits of 20.5 million euros ($27.8 million) for 2010. The company is the world’s largest manufacturer of corks, making three billion a year. One in four corks popped around the globe is made by Amorim’s company. Like the corks, Amorim’s investments have also popped up far and wide, including: 33.44 % of GALP, Portugal’s energy company; a share in Spain’s third largest  financial institution, Banco
Popular; and in BIC, a commercial bank in Angola. Despite this vast wealth, Amorim has no time for fast boats and private jets—corks are his business and passion. In fact, rare passion flows in the interview when the thorny subject of plastic bottle stoppers comes up. “Plastic is not appropriate for wine.
Nature never spoils. The champagne industry has been in existence for 320 years and it has never stopped using corks. Corks are always preferred by people with good taste. It (plastic stoppers) is a bad taste idea,” he says. So why is this man, with a passion for corks, throwing millions into Mozambique’s often uncertain banking sector with its past allegations of corruption? Legendary investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso was gunned down in a Maputo street in 2000 while at the heart of an investigation into corruption in banking in Mozambique.
<div id="attachment_167" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-167" class="size-large wp-image-167" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/290-289-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Portuguese billionaire &amp; majority shareholder of newly launched Banco Unico, celebrates the opening of the bank&#8217;s headquarters in Maputo, Mozambique; 14 September 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
A lot has changed in the last 10 years, but there is still talk among sources in the know in Maputo of murky goings on in the banks. But Amorim is unconcerned. “I don’t consider Mozambique a risk. It has stability and its institutions are functioning. It is a rich country with a lot of raw materials and minerals… I have investments in 37 countries around the world, including Europe, and even there, there is corruption. It’s not a thing that bothers me.” The rewards for risk in Mozambique could be high for those with light feet and an eye for a fast return. In the week that Amorim landed in Maputo, the first coal exports from the mighty Moatize project, near Tete in the north-west corner of the country, was railed down the Sena railway line and exported through the northern port of Beira.
The Moatize expects to ramp up to four million tons of thermal coal a year, for electricity production. It has a target of 52 million tons by 2026, according to consultants working on the project. On top of this, BHP Billiton runs the Mozal smelter, just to the south of Maputo; South African energy giant Sasol is investing $300 million into the Pande gas field 600km north east of the capital. In Maputo itself, foreign investors have brought the swinging construction cranes back to the skyline as they build offices and homes for the newly wealthy.
Mozambique, once the poorestcountry in the world, where less than two decades ago even food was scarce, is growing fast and the financial industry is growing with it.
A report by KPMG in 2009 said the banks of Mozambique were highly profitable, despite the international financial crisis, seeing a profit of $116.4 million for the year, up 17.9% on 2008. Revenue from loans grew by 13.3% and bad debts were less than 2%. New anti-corruption laws are on the way, even though they are greeted with scepticism by many Mozambican business people. “It will exist only on paper,” chuckled a young Mozambican entrepreneur over a beer in a nearby restaurant.
One Mozambican who is bullish about his economy, to say the least, is Joao Figueiredo, the home-grown CEO One of the many cranes operating in the heart of Maputo of Banco Unico. He predicts that the economy will grow at 10.5% by 2013, compared to the current growth of 6.6%. Even so, Banco Unico could struggle to lend in the early days in the face of high interest rates. The International Monetary Fund is urging Mozambique to keep a tight monetary policy to fight inflation of around 12.8%, even at the risk of a slowdown in the economy.
Despite this, the repo rate came down in August, but before anyone got too excited, it went down to 16%. Couldn’t this be a problem for the new bank on the block? Not exactly, says Figueiredo. “When you look at the market you have to look beyond the short term to the long-term possibilities of Mozambique… The economy appreciates in terms of long-term. There is potential for the future, especially in the mining sector. The stability of the inflation rate and itsdecrease from the beginning of the year is a good sign.” Banco Unico is trying a different approach to break into a market which is dominated by four major banks. Its branches are all designer furniture and soft background music, more airport lounge than bank; there are no queues and there’s coffee while you wait for your consultant to deal with you one-on-one.
It is clear that the bank is aimed at the moneyed middle class, which, the cynics point out, excludes most of the population. Fernando Lima, a veteran Maputo journalist, says: “There are inefficiencies in the banks here. They are expanding but don’t have the human resources to keep pace. There is a lot of poaching of top staff. People also want to see more competition among the banks.” Figueiredo says: “The four biggest banks have 90.2% of the market. It is a concentrated market. There is competition, but there is room for more.
Room to grow as a financial system… The system is not yet mature and that contribution we can give to the market. There is space for more banks, but there are things you need to know before coming to Mozambique. You can’t come with foreign concepts because they won’t work here.” Banco Unico plans to go regional in the future; it appears the world’s 212th richest billionaire is in for the long haul. The interviews in the offices overlooking Maputo harbor, conducted to the crash of waves below, are over. It is night now and the many colored lights of the ships in the harbor shine forth like beacons.
As I thank Amorim for his time and patience he says, through the translator: “You don’t get tired when you love what you do.” For now, Amorim loves putting foreign direct investment into Mozambique, an emerging economy that needs it more than most.

Popping Millions Into Mozambique

Just over the road from the newest bank in Mozambique, a would-be tycoon was nurturing his dream to the clatter of knives, forks and glasses. It was a warm, busy Maputo night in a packed Mundos, on Julius Nyerere Avenue; Portuguese football giants, Benfica, played Manchester United on television.
<div id="attachment_169" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-169" class="size-large wp-image-169" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/290-564-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Mundo&#8217;s owner Albert Hechter, Maputo, Mozambique; 14 September 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
The tray-bearing waiters waltzed through the crowded bar with a fleet-footedness worthy of Wayne Rooney; the cold beer flowed down scores of throats with the ease of Ashley Young gliding down the wing. It ought to: this bar is the biggest retailer of beer in Mozambique selling 15,000 liters a month. In the middle of it all, the ready grin of mine host, Albert Hechter, a man who risked all 20 years ago and reaped a fortune.
“I could sell it for a million dollars now, but I won’t,” says Hechter breezily through the cackle of carousing patrons. It’s an entrepreneurial story that began in 1990 in the last days of a bitter civil war in Mozambique. Hechter arrived in the country to work in a hotel and left with an idea. “There weren’t even any cars on the road in Maputo in those days. But also, there were no restaurants or takeaways either,” says Hechter.
Towards the end of 1991, Hechter scraped together R15,000 ($1,900) in South Africa to buy two hot dog vans and drove north for the border. It was a huge step for Hechter, an Afrikaner from conservative Pretoria—a city where a big trip was a night out in Johannesburg. “Everyone thought I was mad! The war was still on in Mozambique. But I was 20 years old and had big balls.”
On arrival in Maputo, he parked one hot dog van on the beachfront and the other in Kenneth Kaunda Avenue, near to the foreign embassies. Sure enough, the idea bore fruit and within weeks there were snaking queues along the beach and around the embassies. Diplomats tore themselves away from foreign affairs to send their drivers to buy the only hot dog with mustard in Mozambique.
A year later, Hechter borrowed R70,000 ($8,900) from his dad in Pretoria to buy a snack bar in downtown Maputo—the forebear of Mundos. These were busy and lucrative times for those who had the wherewithal to put up any form of refreshment or entertainment in bleak post war Maputo. The city may have been a rundown shadow of itself, but UN peacekeeping troops were in town and the US dollars swirled like a cloud of confetti around sparse entertainment hot spots. Hechter made a little pile and in 1994 left Mozambique to go traveling for a year. He arrived back in South Africa, just in time see his country win the 1995 Rugby World Cup, but found the bite of the Mozambique business bug as hard to shrug off as a Maputo mosquito.
So, by 1996, he was back in Maputo to build a new Mundos, this time on Julius Nyerere Avenue, in a building rented from the Catholic Church. He started with 40 seats and in 15 years, he has built it into a thriving watering hole with 370 seats. Every night, tourists, diplomats, businesspeople, pilots, engineers, soldiers, ex-soldiers and aid workers rub shoulders at the bar; you don’t have to enjoy a drink to enjoy the atmosphere, but it helps. In Mundos, I once met an English accent educated direct descendant of Archduke Franz Ferdinand—the Austrian heir to the throne whose assassination in Sarajevo sparked World War I. I pointed out that many of my family had perished in that war.
“Oh, I am terribly sorry about that,” he said in a very cut glass English accent. We both laughed. You see what I mean about drink. The bar used to be full of South Africans and expats from New York to Nigeria, but times are changing fast. Hechter reckons 80% of his customers are now middleclass Mozambicans with money to spend. “Most South Africans I see here now are builders looking for work.”
Above the din of the crowded bar, he said the recession appears to have passed Maputo by. “You go into the bars in Maputo and they are still packed. People in Mozambique don’t have the car and health payments that, say, South Africans do, so people have money to spend. The city is booming, rents are going up to between $3,000 and $4,000 a month. It is almost back to the days of UNiMOZ (when United Nations troops packed the city and paid premium rents). There are five construction cranes within one kilometer of this bar.” For the affable Hechter, the blue sky, over the palm fringed Maputo Harbor, is the limit as far as Mozambique’s economic fortunes are concerned.
His wife and children live over the border in South Africa, in Nelspruit, and he divides his time between Maputo and home—leading to the inevitable question over whether the next generation of the Hechters will be charging over the border into the exhilarating, heady uncertainty of Mozambique’s dynamic emerging economy. “I wouldn’t allow my kids to do it,” says Hechter with that wide smile that sold a million beers in Mozambique.
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Tag: Mozambique

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