Happiness Watimanywa

I am a Dar es Salaam-based entrepreneur and business leader with a decade of experience across real estate advisory, digital innovation, fintech ecosystem development, and financial services in East Africa. I founded Roussos Realty in November 2024. The firm is a boutique real estate consultancy serving multinational corporations, institutional investors, and high-net-worth clients across Tanzania's premium property market. Roussos Realty was built on a conviction that Tanzania's property sector demands institutional-quality advisory intelligence: structured mandates, verified listings, tenant screening, deal documentation, and financial reporting in a market where informal, relationship-only brokerage remains dominant. Within the first year, 80% of transactions were generated through referrals. A true reflection of what rigorous advisory execution delivers in frontier markets. Before founding Roussos Realty, I served as Head of Digital Innovation and IT at Mwananchi Communications (Tanzania's largest print media house) where I led the rebuild of the in-house e-paper app, launched paywalls across three news websites, and organised Tanzania's first-ever Startup Investors' Tradeshow. I also secured NMB Bank funding at ideation stage to build a digital community platform for women, and forged partnerships with UCSAF, AKDN, and others to advance digital inclusion across the country. The role I consider most formative, however, came earlier: Inaugural Project Manager of PesaTech — Tanzania's first fintech accelerator. That experience honed my understanding of what it takes to shift the structural conditions around innovation, not just the outputs. By coordinating regulators, investors, corporates, and international funders simultaneously, I helped lay the foundational building blocks of trust across groups with competing interests through structured facilitation. The programme established a precedent that has shaped Tanzania's financial innovation ecosystem since. My foundation is Big 4 rigour at KPMG East Africa as an auditor across financial services, government, and trade organisations. I hold ACCA membership, a BA in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University, and a Certificate in Innovation Management for Africa from AOTS Tokyo.