Belzénia Matsinhe – Stone by stone building the future

At the end of 2017, Belzénia Matsinhe had a business idea and, encouraged by friends, participated and won the African Women in Technology (AWIT) contest. Today, “Easy Work” is off the paper and democratises access to architectural and civil engineering services for ordinary Mozambicans.

The entrepreneur does not believe in magic formulas, but she is aware that her routine ensures that she is energised and willing to face the daily challenges of her business, managing to dedicate some time, every day, to perfecting herself in technical and business management matters.

She wakes up at 4 am, dedicates the first three hours of the day to physical exercise, spiritual practice, study and planning of the day’s activities. From 7 am, she is in execution mode of the plans drawn up for the day and meets the 1001 demands of business and personal life. She goed to bed early, around 8 pm, unless she has an event or a job.

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“I have to manage the schedule, because it’s not easy being a civil engineer, business administrator, university professor and mother of a beautiful girl,” she says with a slight smile.

Obra Fácil is a social business that seeks profit by generating value for society.

Born in Inhambane, daughter of a former construction technician, granddaughter of a bricklayer and carpenter, fate was already whispering that the girl would be a Civil Engineer. “Conversations about construction were always common at home, throughout my childhood. Despite this, I only decided on my degree after completing high school. My father encouraged me in the choice and during college,” she recalls.

She was always dedicated to her studies, after all she was a scholarship holder at the Transportation and Communications Institute for Higher Education (ISUTC). Graduated in 2015, four years later she enters the master’s degree in Disaster Risk Management and Adaptation to Climate Change at the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), which she hopes to complete this year.

I have to manage the schedule, because it’s not easy being a civil engineer, business administrator, university professor and mother of a beautiful girl.

“I started working right in the second year of the course and when I graduated I sought experience in different areas of civil engineering until I decided on the path of entrepreneurship,” she says, detailing that she went on this path because “while still in college, the professors who I admired most were all entrepreneurs. What’s more, our reality, as Mozambicans, will only improve if we work towards it.”

And about her company, Obra Fácil is a social business that seeks profit by generating value for society, impacting it positively. It offers a set of services, from the project design to technical assistance for the execution of the construction for the social classes not served by other companies in the sector.

“Our target audience dreams of decent housing, but does not have access to formal engineering and architectural services, which results in the qualitative deficit of housing in the country that negatively affects the health and quality of life of families, when construction does not collapse and decimates the lives of entire families, which has been common in the regions of the country most vulnerable to natural disasters,” she emphasises.

The company Obra Fácil also has an educational bias. Through social media, it spreads good practices in projects and constructions.

In addition to the founder, the permanent team at Obra Fácil is formed by the architect Joscelino Macandze, responsible for the project design area, and by the engineering technician Gisele Munhequeia. There is also a team of more than 10 technical service providers in Maputo, Inhambane and Sofala.

“Three months ago, we reached the break-even point at which the investment made in recent times paid off and we started to see the profits of the business, in this new phase,” she details, indicating that “we have never benefited from financing.”

The company Obra Fácil this year recorded an increase in sales volume by more than 100%. Despite the evolution, she still has more ambitions: to increase the company’s reach in order to reach the entire national territory and to develop a project to train the civil construction workforce, which works informally.

▶  Highlight

Obra Fácil is a social business that seeks profit by generating value for society,

“I have to manage the schedule, because it’s not easy being a civil engineer, business administrator, university professor and mother of a beautiful girl”.

Issue 76 Nov/Dec| Download.