Willingness to diversify pays dividends

"Only when we become financially viable can we help others to have a viable business," Zhou says.

"If an investment consulting company cannot survive in the first place, how can we guide others to succeed?"

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Zhou has been in Mozambique since Sogecoa was established in 1999, and went back to China in 2007 when his wife had a baby. He returned in 2011.

When Sogecoa realized it could not persuade a large group of Chinese to come to Mozambique immediately, it tackled the problem pragmatically: it turned the large space at its disposal into a supermarket, and the suites into hotel rooms. It soon got cash flow, and the company survived.

While other Chinese companies left the country for lack of revenue or went bankrupt, Sogecoa managed to pay off its loan.

Zhou attributes the company's success to its down-to-earth approach to business."Since we had the property, we needed to make use of it, rather than waiting for Chinese investors to arrive."

In addition to the supermarket in Maputo, Sogecoa has seven supermarkets in five other African countries. Products generally come from China and include almost everything from instant noodles and kettles to plastic Christmas trees.

Twenty years after Sogecoa was founded, Chinese investors are flooding into Africa, and 40 percent of its real estate space is rented out to Chinese companies doing business in Africa, and the rest is taken up by hotel rooms.

Commercial real estate development has become a focus of Sogecoa. It plans a five-star hotel in Maputo, on the beach, in partnership with international hotel brands such as Sheraton and Hilton.

Every year the parent company pumps money into Mozambique and so far the largest investment project is in the port of Beira, the country's second-largest city. The company has built a five-star resort in the city, and a China-Mozambique economic and trade cooperation park, the building of which has just been completed.

"We run two five-star hotels and a big supermarket in Hefei, so we have the experience to do this kind of thing in Africa," Zhou says.

Sogecoa also built MBS, the biggest shopping center in Maputo.

Sogecoa is now present in 26 countries including 12 in Africa. It employs more than 100 Chinese and 600 local workers in Mozambique alone.

As the company continues to grow, it has hired labor lawyers to put in place a legal framework to avoid industrial conflict, a common problem for foreign companies in Africa.

Sogecoa says it treats all of its branches in no matter what country as equal, and they all report directly to the parent company in Anhui. Zhou and other overseas managers fly back to China at the end of every year to report to headquarters.

Now almost all of the company's construction work has moved overseas, Zhou says. "In Africa, we do most of our business in Madagascar and Zimbabwe."

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