Online Reporter
Innocent Madonko
Deputy Editor
WHEN Nigerian billionaire and Africa’s richest man Mr Aliko Dangote landed in Harare last week to finalise his more than US$1 billion investment deal with President Mnangagwa, he was surrounded by unfamiliar faces which many Zimbabweans could not identify.
A few unassuming business executives received Mr Dangote, with Special Presidential Investment Advisor Dr Paul Tungwarara and investment facilitator Ms Josephine Mahachi, who is a familiar face in the Zimbabwean media space.
One of the business people, among several others, who received Mr Dangote at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport was Mr Senziwani Sikhosana, a quiet and astute local businessman who prefers working discreetly in the boardroom shadows than in the full glare of publicity and limelight.
It was only until recently that the media began to ask who Mr Sikhosana is after his exploits which spoke louder than words.
The Dangote deal amplified the question.
Prior to that, besides a few who may have listened to some of his public addresses, not many outside the banking and financial services sector and the complex treasury or financial engineering world, knew him.
Yet he has been quite a force to be reckoned with, working in the professional field, setting up businesses and executing big financial transactions for at least 25 years.
Before the Dangote visit, Mr Sikhosana, who industry colleagues prefer to simply call Sikho, had made a few prominent public appearances, most notably during the London Investment Conference in April 2023 and at the launch of TX Money Transfer agency in mid-2024.
The London Investment Conference held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London, which he co-organised with the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion and the fast-growing Victoria Falls Stock Exchange, as well as a UK-based consultancy, was attended by government officials, including Finance Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube, influential business executives, international investors, major company representatives from Zimbabwe and British capital markets players.
He was one of the key speakers at the high-profile conference and grabbed the limelight at the launch of TX.
The TX platform was introduced at the Africa Unity Square in Harare mid-2024 aiming to improve financial remittance reliability, transparency, and efficiency in Zimbabwe.
It is also designed to ensure financial inclusion.
But still, the question remains: Who is Senziwani Sikhosana?
Mr Sikhosana is currently Bard Santner Incorporated chief executive officer.
Bard Santner Inc is a Harare-headquartered financial services advisory company whose business operations span corporate finance, asset and wealth management, microfinance, and remittances.
The firm also engages in various corporate social responsibilities, especially sports sponsorship, particularly football, golf and cricket.
The company is based in Harare and has an office in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa.
It also has a strategic presence through an international office in New York, United States, to facilitate international investment, offer advisory services and cut financial transactions.
Working closely with his colleagues, including Messrs Tatenda Hungwe and Lucia Chingwaru, and investment facilitator Ms Mahachi, Mr Sikhosana became the mastermind behind the Dangote deal.
Arranging the deal involved planning, several meetings and execution with precision.
While many — and even much bigger deals have been consummated in Zimbabwe — the significance of the Dangote visit lay in investor confidence-building momentum, the attendant positive contagion and game-changing perception.
Bringing Africa’s richest man and the wealthiest black person in the world with operations in 17 countries across the continent to Zimbabwe – after failed attempts in 2015 and 2018 – was a strategic and significant ground-breaking move.
It will not fix all Zimbabwe’s challenges, but certainly provide an impactful foreign direct investment inflow, employment and investor boost confidence in the economy.
Mr Dangote’s projects in Zimbabwe span cement manufacturing, coal mining, power generation, and a fuel pipeline from the west Atlantic coast of Namibia, where he is building a big refinery, to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe – a massive investment with a potential to have far reaching positive spin-offs for the fuel industry.
In the cement industry, the entry of Dangote Group, just like it did in the Zambian market, is likely to result in a significant lowering of the price of cement with attendant positive ramifications for the wider economy.
Mr Sikhosana’s financial expertise and dedication, instrumental in bringing Mr Dangote back to Zimbabwe after a failed attempt in 2015, will be required on these projects.
His team worked tirelessly for 16 months, conducting discreet negotiations that ultimately led to the signing of a landmark agreement with Government.
This savvy business manoeuvre has not only earned him recognition, but also positioned Zimbabwe as an attractive investment destination and created opportunities for others.
After months of courting Africa’s leading industrialist, Mr Sikhosana and his colleagues finally came face to face with Mr Dangote at the Afreximbank Annual Meetings held in Abuja in June 2025.
Subsequently, they went back to see him at his headquarters in Lagos where they toured his operations at Dangote Refinery.
At that meeting, it was agreed Dangote would come back to Zimbabwe to invest, but before all that he had to meet President Mnangagwa to obtain the highest assurances, some of which would be to iron out whatever obstacles he had encountered in 2015, including mining concessions, tax incentives, technical details, work permits for experts and investment security.
Through this quiet phase of the deal-making process, Mr Sikhosana and his team met President Mnangagwa to clear the path for Mr Dangote.
This led to Mr Dangote’s visit to Harare last week and signing of the investment agreement. By training, Mr Sikhosana is a banking and finance professional, as well as a chartered management accountant with over 25 years of experience.
He was educated at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo where he earned a Master’s Degree in Banking and Finance.
His expertise includes asset and liability management, fixed income, forex trading, and treasury management.
After working for various banks, including National Merchant Bank, Trust Merchant Bank, Kingdom Merchant Bank, and Interfin Merchant Bank, he went into transport logistics.
He established Burious Logistics which grew to a peak of 40 Trucks operating in Southern Africa, transporting bulk goods across Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia.
Concurrently, Mr Sikhosana founded and operated Plastec Designs P/L, a plastics and allied products manufacturing company as well as Refresh industries P/L which produced fruit juices.
This equipped him with not only knowledge of industrial operations as well as fast-moving consumer goods, but also has the lived experience for 10 years of what a leader of a business conglomerate involved in trucking, manufacturing and production go through in a challenging economic environment.
In 2016, Mr Sikhosana went back into banking and helped to co-found Access Finance Group, which included Access Forex where he was a shareholder and managing director.
The company had operations in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the United Kingdom. After leaving Access Finance in 2022, Mr Sikhosana set up Bard Santner with colleagues, Messrs Hungwe, Chingwaru and Alfred Mthimkhulu, an experienced Zimbabwean asset management expert and finance lecturer from Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
Bard Santner has grown in leaps and bounds, handling huge transactions including facilitating a US$113 million property transaction involving The Grove Mall of Namibia, acquiring the Tetrad Financial Services managed client’s portfolio and now the Dangote deal, among other many big transactions.
Mr Sikhosana’s experience in banking was profoundly shaped by three remarkable influences, particularly seasoned banker Mr Julius Makoni who awakened his sense of elegance and sophistication within the industry; Mr Nigel Chanakira who anchored him and honed his technical skills rigour in banking; and Mr Farai Rwodzi who ignited his entrepreneurial spirit, which all define his fascinating journey in the enterprising and tumultuous business world.
Apart from learning from Messrs Makoni, Chanakira and Rwodzi, among others, Mr Sikhosana is also getting more valuable knowledge and exposure working closely with Mr Vinod Bussawah, a seasoned Mauritian financial executive who chairs Bard Santner.
Armed with this vast experience spanning banking, logistics, manufacturing and fast-moving consumer goods, the buccaneering Mr Sikhosana is now with continental industrial titan, Dangote, and is in the process seized with the next rungs of his impressive career helping to domesticate the Dangote Group investment portfolio in Zimbabwe through Bard Santner who are the nominated transaction advisors.
