adminThupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
This year’s edition of the Beitbridge Business Summit and Awards will be held at the Kingdom Light Global Church on November 12 and 13 with the organisers saying preparations have gathered momentum.
The summit is being held for the third year running and it seeks to promote entrepreneurship among the youth and indigenous businesspeople from the border town.
Event organiser, Mr Innocent Chenjerai said they are building on the success of the last two events held in 2019 and 2020.
Mr Chenjerai said the registration of the entities including established businesses, small to medium enterprises (SMEs), and aspiring businesspeople was now underway.
“Beitbridge has vast investment opportunities which people needed to exploit and that can only be a success with platforms such as the business summits,” he said.
“This year, we invited Mr Fortune Chasi (Parliamentarian), Apostle Java, Mr Leonard Banda from Zambia (Chairman of the African Residency Centre, and Community Development Champion, Mr Nqobile Ncube. We are still waiting for the other influential woman who is yet to respond to our invite”.
Mr Chenjerai said the event will be held under the theme “THE LEAP — Taking business from a community perspective to a global perspective”.
He said the business summit will also run with the presentation of awards to the Top 20 most influential people in Beitbridge, Iconic Personal Awards and Business Resilience Category.
This, he said, was being done to appreciate companies and entrepreneurs who survived and have been resilient since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The business resilience is important to us because, these companies and entities kept on employing our youths and the community of Beitbridge.
“We have started getting nomination of these awards from members of the Beitbridge community,” said Mr Chenjerai.
In terms of preparations they were fine-tuning a few grey areas.
“We already have companies in Harare that are coming for the Summit, the other one is a drilling company then the other one is a CCTV security company. We also have companies in Beitbridge that have shown interest.”
He said those interested in participating at the summit should contact the organisers on +263777868740 and +263719868740.
Mr Chenjerai said they will take up the early entries due to the limited number they are expected to host in line with the obtaining Covid-19 protocols. Beitbridge is one of the fastest-growing towns in the country with a lot of economic development opportunities due to its location and proximity to Sadc’s economic powerhouse, South Africa.
Some of the investment opportunities include agro-based industries, canning, tannery , manufacturing, transport and logistics, ICT, tourism and culture, health, mining, education, accommodation and recreation, and dry ports.
Others are bonded warehouses, oil processing, glass manufacturing, citrus production, and value addition of related products, shipping and forwarding, and airport among others.
In addition, the local municipality has since availed 248 hectares of land to be exploited through the Special Economic Zones facility.
Online Reporter