Zimbabwe: UK Zim Achievers Awards – From Safety Guard to Founding Multi-Million-Greenback Firm and Being Spat At Whereas Advertising and marketing Zim Tourism

The women’ frocks duly dazzled, the gents’s dinner fits have been immaculate, the wine suitably flamboyant and sure to ensure an ostentatious sozzle.

This was Saturday night at The Leonardo Metropolis Resort in central London; and the occasion was the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards (ZAA) England version.

Now of their twelfth version and having unfold past the UK to different nations comparable to Australia, Canada, South African and the US, the ZAAs are aimed toward recognising and celebrating the successes and achievements of Zimbabweans within the Diaspora.

And on Saturday many success tales have been recognised and honoured throughout all areas of human endeavour, from the humanities to entrepreneurship and sport.

Nonetheless, two tales have been notably inspiring and emblematic of the tenacity and focus which works into attaining success.

Jeff Madzingo was one of many keynote audio system and he went on stage holding a blue jacket emblazoned ‘The Watch Safety’.

Madzingo labored as a banker in Zimbabwe earlier than shifting to the UK for a post-graduate programme on a British Council scholarship.

Relating his expertise, Madzingo mentioned, after finishing the post-graduate programme, he was not in a position to get a banking job within the UK and located himself working as a safety guard.

The jacket he introduced on stage was his uniform then, greater than a decade in the past.

Nonetheless, he didn’t despair and used his time working as safety guard to check and safe skilled {qualifications} in mortgages and insurance coverage.

He then began a enterprise which helped hundreds of diasporans purchase their first houses whereas others have been in a position to set up property portfolios of their very own.

After the mortgage enterprise, Madzingo based an revolutionary insurance coverage product which, 13 years later, has grown right into a multi-million greenback enterprise.

Diaspora Insurance coverage, a headline sponsor for Saturday’s awards gala, now has operations not simply within the UK and the Zimbabwe diaspora but additionally greater than ten different African nations.

WATCH BELOW

Not like the normal funeral insurance policies which give one a coffin and a bus for transport to put of burial, Diaspora Insurance coverage is designed to reply to the altering wants of transnational diasporan communities.