Online Reporter
A number were taken aback when the Government legalised the cultivation and value addition of cannabis for medicinal and industrial purposes in April 2018.
They expressed fears that the approval for wider, open cultivation could trigger an increase in illegal consumption of a product that is notorious for landing hundreds in jail, as well as ruining families and lives.
However, by becoming the second African country after Lesotho to make the bold, revolutionary move, authorities already knew the multiple, high-value benefits of the crop. We have learnt over the past seven years that as long as the legal framework and Government oversight are strong, the fears that some among us had were unfounded.
There is no evidence that the legalisation has caused an increase in recreational consumption of cannabis, which remains illegal in our country. What we are seeing is evidence that some investors are already growing medicinal cannabis and processing it into a wide range of medicines that are being legally sold in several pharmacies on the local market to treat various conditions.
Speaking after touring Thathokuhle Cannabis Farm in Douglasdale, some 20km south of the Bulawayo city centre on Friday, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister, Dr Anxious Masuka stressed the importance of the sub-sector taking steps up from concentrating on producing and exporting the leaf to processing it into higher-value products.
“The intention of doing value addition rhymes with the President’s thrust under the rural food systems transformation agenda,” we cite him as saying elsewhere in these papers today.
“Cannabis must follow a full value-chain approach if it is to contribute meaningfully to the economy. The value is at the subsequent nodes of the value chain I’ve seen here that they are also collaborating with successful enterprises in South Africa and are able to get the skills required so that they can accelerate the value addition and beneficiation. Therefore, I look forward to coming back and seeing that progress.”
Indeed, our country is on the move, up and up multiple value chains.
Just a few weeks ago, President Mnangagwa commissioned a $100 million cigarette manufacturing plant in Harare, which has the capacity to produce 12 000 sticks per minute, 720 000 per hour and 5 760 000 in an eight-hour shift.
In the mining sector, Bikita Minerals, Arcadia, Sandawana and Sabi Star lithium mines are investing billions in lithium sulphate production lines ahead of a 2027 deadline for them to have stopped lithium concentrate exports.
Platinum miners, including Zimplats and Mimosa mines, are also pumping large sums of money into value addition facilities as the Government considers a five percent levy on raw platinum exports.
This is the direction that the economy must be on as we march towards an empowered, upper-middle-income society by 2030, the cannabis sub-sector contributing to that ascend.
In addition to medicinal cannabis derivatives like the oils and medicines we mentioned earlier, we want to see more beneficiation of industrial cannabis into textiles, cordage and building materials and so on, so that we intensify the domestication of value for greater economic and social returns instead of exporting it cheaply.
