Andrew
Sunday Mail Reporter
REJOINING the Commonwealth will help Zimbabwe enhance its economic growth and strengthen international relations, Commonwealth Assistant Secretary General Prof Luis Francesch has said.
Speaking soon after arriving at the Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare yesterday, Prof Franceschi said it is important for countries to collaborate to ensure economic growth and development.
Prof Franceshi, who is leading a four-member delegation, will meet President Mnangagwa, senior Government officials and other stakeholders during a week-long visit to the country to assess the bid made by Zimbabwe in 2018 to rejoin the Commonwealth.
“I have been sent here by the Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland, and on invitation by the Excellency, the President of Zimbabwe, and it is part of the informal process and assessment of countries that want to engage and re-engage with the Commonwealth,” he said.
“We will be meeting with Ministers, Government officials, the opposition, civil society and electoral authorities. We will then give a report to the Heads of Governments, who have sent us here.”
Prof Franceschi said it was important to continue fostering the culture of unity and cooperation, which was promoted by Africa’s founding fathers.
“No country in today’s world is an island and isolated and we feel that in the world we want to engage with each other.
“The Commonwealth is a beautiful institution and in many ways it is what it is through great African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda, who wanted to sit at the same table with colonisers and . . . discuss. This is the beauty of the Commonwealth; all countries are equal, there is no power that is more equal than the other. We all want to collaborate and learn from each other.”
In 2019, President Mnangagwa told the United Nations General Assembly that Zimbabwe had not been expelled from the Commonwealth but had withdrawn and the issues that led to its pulling out had since become water under the bridge.
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