By Matthew Tostevin CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's African Sun Ltd expects profits to fall 50 percent at its hotels this year due to the global crisis, but sees strong future growth in West Africa because of a shortage of rooms as well as at home. African Sun, not linked to the South African Southern Sun group, has expanded rapidly within the continent since 2007 to manage hotels in southern, west and east Africa. "We have been too dependent on arrivals from long-haul markets so that we will face a problem there. We will have a fall in profit of about 50 percent," chief executive Shingi Munyeza told Reuters in Cape Town. "But that is going to be mitigated by new openings." He said profit after tax would fall to around $6 million in the year to the end of September from twice that the previous year. Munyeza said African Sun was on course to add 1,000 rooms over the next few months to its current 3,000 and, over the next three to four years, planned to reach a total of 8,500 rooms with new builds. "Room capacity in Africa has not been measuring up to economic growth, particularly in the past 10 years," he said. "Average economic growth in sub Saharan-Africa was 6 percent but if you look at room growth it was 5 percent or in some cases nothing at all." "Our West African market in the next three years is going to be our strongest market in terms of cash flows and so on because of the high demand in hotel rooms but still very low supply." African Sun manages hotels in oil-producing Nigeria and Ghana, which is also due to start pumping oil next year. Munyeza also saw big growth in Zimbabwe since a power-sharing government between President Robert Mugabe and old rival Morgan Tsvangirai started work in February, already bringing signs of improvement. "Zimbabwe will kick in in a much more meaningful way in the coming year with the dollarisation of the economy, with a correcting political stalemate, and also investors and the local economy beginning to be guided and guarded properly," he said. "The upside of Zimbabwe is almost immeasurable." African Sun shares traded at $0.11 on Wednesday on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, where prices are now denominated in dollars. The stock touched a year high of $0.12 in May. | 
