Maurice Mdlolo’s twenty year track record in property management and development make him the ideal candidate to steer Liberty Properties current developments and aggressively seek third party mandates, ensuring the company retains its position of strength in South Africa and beyond its borders. His in-depth knowledge of the property industry and proven negotiation skills lends strategic insight to the company’s property management, leasing property development units.

In an interview with Ruth Obih (CEO 3invest) at the Africa Property Investment Summit in South Africa, this was held from the 3rd to the 4th of September 2013. Maurice discussed on certain issues pertaining to real estate in Africa:

Ruth: Good morning and welcome to Africa property investment summit, it’s quite a well attended summit, so tell me, why Liberty is sponsoring this event? What is the effect of APIS on Africa real estate since inception?

Maurice: This Africa property investment summit (APIS), we the main founders of the summit six years ago when we embarked on property or real estate investment across the continent we picked up that, because we went out there alone and we realized that there are a lot of challenges whether you are looking from the professional team, you are looking from the construction company or the land owners. So and we then thought we need to create a platform where we can bring in all the stakeholders share some of their ideas, share some of their challenges, find solutions in terms of how we then unlock this real estate investment opportunity which is sitting in the continent, so that’s how the property investment summit was born and then we stayed as a platinum sponsor because we obviously see value and it has grown from strength to strength in the past three years and so there is a lot of partnership that is being formed out of this.

Ruth: How long has this event been?

Maurice: it’s been three years ago since when we start with this and it is growing from strength to strength, every year we over subscribe in terms of delegates.

Ruth: what do you think about real estate investment in Africa as it is right now and what do you think about Nigeria’s real estate?

Maurice: Nigeria is definitely a sleeping giant and the opportunities are there and I think there are a number of challenges and which will be dealt with in the summit in terms of just making sure because we have got to get this giant to get going, because that will then open other opportunities for the rest of the continent and once I suppose the outside market start seeing the good things happening whether in South Africa or in Nigeria then the investors will start looking at us in a different light.

Ruth: I understand liberty is now fully present in Nigeria so tell me, what are your plans, what do you plan to do in Nigeria?

Maurice: From a liberty point of view we definitely see that growth will come outside of South Africa and Nigeria is one of those target countries, which we said that’s where growth is going to come from. Whether you are looking from a real estate point of view or from the insurance point of view, My predecessor Samuel Ogbu he is right now in Lagos because he is got to find other opportunities from the insurance point of view and so we are all hunting galloping left, right and Centre from a liberty group point of view to find these opportunities.

Ruth: What do you think In terms of having this kind of event in Nigeria; do you have plans to expand it to other African countries?

Maurice: Definitely, that’s the plan. From day one that has been the plan, we just got to sort out the logistics but the plan is this is for Africa it’s not for South Africa so it’s got to go to the other African countries and that is the plan.

Ruth: thank you for being here with me

Maurice: thanks a lot Ruth.

2013-09-08