Online Reporter
The 19th COMESA Business Forum will precede the bloc’s Summit of Heads of State and Government, which is scheduled for October 22. The forum will be co-convened by the COMESA Business Council (CBC), ZimTrade and the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with COMESA and the Government of Zimbabwe. It will be held under the theme “One Market, One Future: Advancing Inclusive Industrialisation, Investment and Regional Integration in COMESA”. Organisers said the forum was designed as an “action-oriented response” to the changing global trade and economic environment, with discussions expected to address supply chain disruptions, transport and logistics challenges, access to affordable finance, artificial intelligence and the need for resilient regional markets. The Sunday Mail’s TAWANDA MUSARURWA spoke to COMESA Business Council chief executive officer Dr TEDDY SOOBRAMANIEN about what companies should expect, where the real opportunities and obstacles lie and why the emphasis must now shift “from agreements to utilisation”.
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Q: What should Zimbabwean businesses expect to gain from hosting the COMESA Business Forum, and what would count as success six or 12 months after the event?
A: The COMESA Business Forum is a regional business platform, not simply as another conference. For Zimbabwean businesses, the immediate opportunity is to connect with buyers, investors, distributors, manufacturers, financial institutions and strategic partners from across the COMESA region and beyond.
The regional private sector should come to the forum with a clear proposition: what do they want to sell, where do they want to sell it, what partnerships do they need and what investment are they seeking? The objective should be to convert conversations at the forum into commercial relationships.
This is consistent with the work we do through the COMESA Business Council, where we facilitate business-to-business linkages and create platforms for companies to engage on market access, investment and regional value chains. Our sector workgroups, for example, bring businesses together around areas such as agriculture, manufacturing, financial inclusion, new technologies and the circular economy.
For us, the real measure of the forum will be what happens after Harare — whether businesses remain engaged and whether the relationships established translate into actual transactions, investment and jobs.
Also, the forum will come up with a declaration reflecting the discussions and way forward on the wide array of issues of direct relevance to the business sector.
Q: What distinguishes this forum, held alongside the COMESA Summit in Harare, from previous regional business gatherings, and what deals should Zimbabwean companies position themselves to secure?
A: The strategic advantage this year is the direct proximity between the business and political agendas. The COMESA Business Forum is taking place alongside the 25th COMESA Heads of State and Government Summit, under the theme “One Market, One Future: Advancing Inclusive Industrialisation, Investment and Regional Integration in COMESA”.
The summit programme itself is expected to address industrialisation and regional value chains in critical minerals, agriculture and manufacturing.
This creates an opportunity for the private sector to ensure that its priorities are reflected in the regional integration agenda, while also identifying practical commercial opportunities.
Zimbabwean companies should, therefore, be positioning themselves for several types of transactions: export and distribution agreements, sourcing and procurement contracts, joint ventures, manufacturing partnerships, investment into production capacity, technology-transfer arrangements, logistics partnerships and access to regional supply chains.
The forum should also be used to identify partners rather than only customers.
A Zimbabwean manufacturer, for example, may find a distributor in another COMESA market, a technology partner in a third country and an investor from outside the region who can help expand production.
Q: Which sectors and products offer Zimbabwe the most immediate and realistic opportunities for penetrating the COMESA market, and why?
A: Zimbabwe has capabilities across a number of sectors that can be positioned for regional markets. Agriculture and agro-processing are particularly important because regional markets need reliable supplies of food, processed agricultural products, inputs, packaging and related services.
There are also opportunities in pharmaceuticals and healthcare products, manufactured consumer goods, building materials, chemicals, fertiliser and agricultural inputs, mining-related products and equipment, machinery, packaging, logistics and professional and digital services.
The important point is that we should not only ask what Zimbabwe can export today.
We should also ask what Zimbabwe can produce competitively when it connects with regional partners, technology providers and investors. For example, rather than exporting agricultural commodities in their raw form, businesses can look at processing, packaging, storage and distribution.
In mining, the opportunity is to move progressively from raw materials into processed products, components and services that feed into regional industries.
The COMESA market is currently presented as a market of more than 680 million people across 21 member states. But the size of the market alone does not guarantee exports.
Companies still have to meet standards, understand consumer demand, comply with rules of origin and establish reliable distribution channels. This is why CBC places considerable emphasis on market information, business linkages, sector workgroups and capacity building. Our objective is to help businesses understand not just that a market exists, but how they can practically enter and compete in it.
Q: What are the three biggest obstacles that businesses face in trading across African borders?
A: From the perspective of businesses, I would highlight three major obstacles: non-tariff barriers and regulatory complexity, the high cost and inefficiency of moving goods across borders, and access to affordable cross-border payments and trade finance.
First, non-tariff barriers and regulatory complexity remain a major challenge. Businesses can have access to a market on paper but still face different standards, certification requirements, documentation, licensing procedures and border regulations.
For SMEs in particular, navigating these requirements can be costly and time-consuming. This is why CBC continues to advocate for greater regulatory harmonisation, transparency and practical information for businesses.
Second is the cost and efficiency of logistics and border processes.
Delays at borders, multiple inspections, lengthy documentation processes and high transport costs can make otherwise competitive African products uncompetitive.
There is a need to accelerate digital customs processes, strengthen coordinated border management and improve the efficiency of regional transport corridors.
COMESA’s trade facilitation instruments, including the Simplified Trade Regime, electronic certificates of origin and the Regional Customs Transit Guarantee, are important tools in this regard.
Ultimately, we need to make it easier for a business to move its goods, understand the rules and receive payment. If we can address those three areas, we can make regional trade considerably more practical for African businesses.
Q: How should Zimbabwean businesses use COMESA and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) together rather than treating them as separate trade initiatives?
A: Zimbabwean businesses should see COMESA, the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Free Trade Area and the AfCFTA as complementary layers of Africa’s regional integration architecture, rather than as separate trade initiatives.
COMESA provides Zimbabwean businesses with an established regional market and practical trade facilitation mechanisms. The Tripartite framework expands this opportunity by bringing together the three major regional economic communities — COMESA, the East African Community (EAC) and SADC (Southern African Development Community) — creating a larger market and helping address some of the challenges that arise from overlapping regional trade arrangements.
The AfCFTA then provides the broader continental framework for taking these opportunities beyond the Tripartite region.
For businesses, the practical approach should be to build regionally and scale continentally.
A Zimbabwean company can use the COMESA and Tripartite markets to identify customers and distribution partners, develop regional supply chains, understand market requirements and build the production capacity needed to compete. It can then use the AfCFTA to expand into other African markets.
This is particularly relevant for sectors such as agriculture and agro-processing, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, mining-related products, logistics, financial services and digital services, where companies can participate in regional value chains and progressively expand their markets.
Q: What policy, regulatory and institutional changes does Zimbabwe need so the private sector can turn regional trade commitments into contracts, exports, investment and jobs?
A: I think the starting point is to recognise that signing a trade agreement creates an opportunity; it does not automatically create trade.
First, we need to strengthen structured public-private dialogue around implementation. Businesses are often the first to know where a regional commitment is not translating into practice, and so there must be effective mechanisms for those constraints to move quickly from the business community to the responsible authorities and for solutions to be tracked.
Through our sector workgroups, national business associations, public-private dialogues such as the upcoming 19th COMESA Business Forum, we bring the private sector into the policy process so that regional policy is informed by what businesses actually encounter on the ground.
Second, regional instruments have to be domesticated and fully implemented at national level. Zimbabwe is already participating in important initiatives such as the COMESA Electronic Certificate of Origin and the Electronic Single Window. The opportunity now is to deepen their use, connect the relevant institutions and ensure that digitisation actually removes duplication rather than simply putting an existing paper process online.
Third, we need greater regulatory predictability and harmonisation, particularly around standards, customs procedures, rules of origin and other requirements that affect market access.
A company is far more likely to invest in serving a regional market if it knows the same product will not face completely different requirements every time it crosses a border.
So, I would say the emphasis now has to shift from agreements to utilisation.
We should measure regional integration not only by the instruments governments adopt, but also by how many companies use them, how much time and cost they save, how many new firms begin exporting, and how much regional investment and production they generate.
Q: Where are the biggest opportunities for Zimbabwe to improve competitiveness in cross-border trade costs, transport corridors, border processes, digital customs, standards, payments, trade finance or something else?
A: For Zimbabwe, border efficiency and digital trade facilitation are particularly important. Zimbabwe already has important foundations, for example, the Chirundu one-stop border post (Zambia-Zimbabwe), and Zimbabwe is implementing the COMESA Electronic Certificate of Origin and Electronic Single Window.
The priority should be to build on these systems so that customs, standards agencies, port health and other border institutions increasingly exchange information electronically, use coordinated risk management and minimise unnecessary duplication.
In order to reduce these challenges, I would call it interoperability: interoperable standards and regulatory frameworks, interoperable payment systems and better-connected transport corridors. That is what begins to turn geography into a competitive advantage rather than a cost.
Q: What should Zimbabwean companies be doing now to identify regional partners, secure investment, meet standards and become suppliers to larger African manufacturing and distribution networks?
A: Regional trade should not only mean, “What finished product can I export to another country?” Companies should also be asking: Where in a regional value chain can I compete? What input, service, component, technology or processing capability can I provide better than others?
The private sector, not only in Zimbabwe but in all COMESA countries, should begin by mapping the value chains in which the country already has capabilities or a potential comparative advantage, whether in agriculture and agro-processing, mining and mineral-based industries, leather, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, tourism, technology or other sectors and then identify where the missing regional linkages are.
Second, companies must understand the requirements of the buyer before investing in production. This includes product standards, volumes, consistency, packaging, certification, traceability, delivery schedules and increasingly environmental and sustainability requirements. Meeting those requirements is what converts a promising SME (small and medium enterprise) into a credible regional supplier.
Third, firms should actively pursue partnerships rather than trying to expand alone.
That can include joint ventures, supplier agreements, licensing arrangements, distribution partnerships and technology partnerships with businesses elsewhere in COMESA and across Africa.
Our sector workgroups also matter because they bring companies operating in the same industries across different COMESA markets into one conversation. They allow us to identify both the policy constraints and the commercial opportunities within those sectors.
We are also supporting initiatives focused specifically on strengthening regional value chains and MSME (micro, small and medium enterprise) market access.
The objective is not simply to train companies; it is to move them towards commercial readiness, meeting standards, accessing markets, building partnerships and ultimately securing business.
Q: What practical interventions would make COMESA integration work better for Zimbabwe’s SMEs, informal traders and emerging exporters rather than mainly benefitting large corporations?
A: First, we must simplify the trading process. Instruments such as the COMESA Simplified Trade Regime, Electronic Certificates of Origin and simplified digital procedures are underway to support SMEs. CBC has also been conducting several capacity-building workshops for SMEs and the private sector.
We recently conducted training on rules of origin targeting COMESA Francophone countries.
We need stronger business support ecosystems. CBC works through chambers, business associations and other national focal institutions across COMESA because an SME cannot always engage directly with a regional institution.
We have to strengthen that entire network so that assistance reaches the business at the national and local level.
For me, success would, therefore, mean that a small Zimbabwean producer can find a buyer in another COMESA country, understand the requirements, obtain the necessary certification, make or receive an affordable payment, move the goods through the border predictably and finance the next order. When that becomes routine rather than an exception, regional integration is working.
