BY STAFF REPORTER
AFRICA’s business moguls including Zimbabwean investor Ken Sharpe, prominent South African businesswoman Wendy Ackerman among others scored big at the Forbes Best of Africa Awards held virtually at the Foreign Investment Network (FIN) Leadership and Philanthropy round table on Friday.
Sharpe, who is executive chairman of property development company, West Properties, won the innovative chief executive officer award while Ackerman, a prominent Cape Town businesswoman who together with her husband Raymond were key in the development of the Pick-n-Pay brand, received the Forbes Lifetime Achievement Award.
Other winners of the prestigious awards were Ghadiyali Zuliquar, a multi-faceted technocrat, businessman and leading entrepreneur in the Middle East, Dalith Steiger, co-founder of the award-winning, Start-up, Swiss Cognitive, Rajan Mahtani, a Zambian business magnate, Chairman of Finance Bank Zambia Limited and Sam Matekane, an entrepreneur and chairman of Matekane Group of Companies Lesotho.
Sharpe, in a virtual speech accepting the award said Africa was a continent full of untapped potential and it remains his dream to contribute immensely in the development of Zimbabwe and the continent.
“I see hope and a bright future for Zimbabwe, I know we can build Zimbabwe and we are doing that brick by brick. Africa is a continent of enormous but untapped opportunity. Mostly the news from Africa is negative, about corruption, inept leadership and mediocrity but that is not the whole story,” he said.
The awards are described as one of the biggest and most prestigious in 2021 meant to celebrate important personalities who continue to have significant influence on the business, political, leadership and economic landscape of the continent.
