South African Property Developer, Brett Abrahamse is bringing Hilton into Zimbabwe for the first time. The hotel will open in 2029 with Terrace Africa.
The 140-room Hilton Garden Inn will be the first Hilton-branded property ever to operate in the country. South Africa has ten.
In a statement, it explained that planned hotel will anchor the Highlands Precinct, a mixed-use development Terrace Africa is building that combines offices, retail, dining, residences, hotels and conferencing space. The site sits 20 to 25 kilometres from Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in an established residential and diplomatic district, and the hotel will carry an all-day restaurant with a terrace, a lobby café and bar, a gym, a pool with terrace and meeting rooms.
Carlos Khneisser, Hilton’s Chief Development Officer for the Middle East and Africa, said Zimbabwe recorded more than 1.7 million international arrivals in 2025 and that Harare’s role as a commercial, diplomatic and regional gateway supports demand from business and leisure travellers.
It is the first significant hotel development in Harare in years, in a capital short of quality rooms. Hilton runs more than 70 hotels across Africa with over 100 in its pipeline, more than half of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Who is Brett Abrahamse?
Brett Abrahamse is South African, and he founded Terrace Africa in 2011 at 28. He had studied for a B.Comm Honours in financial analysis at Stellenbosch, then completed the property development programme at the University of Cape Town’s business school. Property was already familiar. His father and uncle were both quantity surveyors, and he grew up on building sites.
His first job was at Liberty Properties and STANLIB, among the largest property owners in South Africa, where he ran business development for the property portfolio for six years. He was part of the team that listed Letlole La Rona on the Botswana Stock Exchange, and won new business in Zambia, Mauritius, Botswana, Mozambique and Swaziland before he turned 30.
He left in 2011 and started two companies at once, Terrace Africa and API Events. Terrace Africa opened Village Walk in Harare in 2017 and the numbers came back better than anything else it owned.
The first projects were funded locally. That changed in 2020, when the company decided Zimbabwe would be central to the business and obtained a licence from the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency allowing it to bring capital in from offshoreTerrace Africa listed the Tigere Property Fund on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in November 2022, the country’s first exchange-traded real estate investment trust. The offer put 255.3 million units on sale at 28 dollars each out of 719,323,000 available. Abrahamse was 38, co-founded the fund, and remains the common director between it and Terrace Africa, which acts as asset manager.
“Partnering with Hilton to introduce its first hotel in Zimbabwe is a defining milestone for the precinct,” Abrahamse said.
