How a developer is building investor trust into a Zanzibar villa project
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Christopher Nash's Liyongo development on Zanzibar's Kendwa coast uses individually titled 99-year leasehold ownership and central management to give investors security in an unfamiliar market.
When British developer Christopher Nash first arrived in Zanzibar in 2021, he was not expecting to build a village. Five years later he is building Liyongo, a 60-villa residential development on the island's coast at Kendwa, How we made it in Africa reports.
Nash identified a mismatch on Kendwa Beach: beachfront resorts were charging around $400 a night, often walled off from the village next door, while the local community saw almost none of that revenue. Potential investors, many with capital already working across Africa, were cautious about Zanzibar because of unfamiliarity with its semi-autonomous legal jurisdiction.
Instead of importing a development template from elsewhere, Nash designed a model around Zanzibar itself: individually titled ownership, professional management of the project as a single operation, and a legal framework the jurisdiction already recognises for this category of property.
Under Zanzibar's Condominium Act, foreign ownership is structured as long-term leasehold rather than freehold, typically a 99-year lease through renewable 33-year terms. Each Liyongo villa enters a single rental pool on handover and is operated centrally, rather than left to dozens of individual owners managing bookings from abroad.
The villas are being built from local, sustainable materials with a local contractor already engaged, and the ownership structure is designed so that the community benefits from the hospitality development alongside investors.