Danish Trade Minister to visit Zim next week

Harare Bureau
THE Danish Minister of Trade and Development Cooperation, Mogens Jensen will visit Zimbabwe for high level meetings next week as steps to towards normalisation of relations with the Nordic country gather momentum.

Jensen, the first senior politician from a Western nation to pay an official visit to Zimbabwe since the elections in 2013, will be in the country between 5 and 7 November.

He comes at a time when the European Union is set to make a policy announcement on the restrictions that were placed on the southern African country over the past decade. He will hold meetings with senior government officials, civil society and business leaders in order to assess the needs and progress made on Danida funded programmes in Zimbabwe.

He will also visit Danish funded activities and projects in the agriculture and judicial sector as well as explore possible commercial opportunities between Zimbabwe and Denmark. Members of the Danida External Grant Committee, which plays a key role in the allocation of funds in Danish development programmes globally, will form part of Minister Jensen’s delegation.

The purpose of their visit is to meet various programme implementing partners to assess how Danish funding materialises on the ground.

Denmark is one of Zimbabwe’s biggest bilateral development partners. With an overall budget of $95 million, the Denmark-Zimbabwe Development Partnership Programme (2013 to 2015) aims to build democratic institutions and promote universal human rights.

Running under the theme “A partnership for democracy and development”, the programme’s needs based interventions are focused on supporting inclusive economic growth through promoting gender equality, eliminating of gender based violence, facilitating access to justice for all, private sector development through agriculture, policy development and infrastructure rehabilitation.

Denmark and Zimbabwe have a long history of cooperation dating back to the struggle for independence when the Nordic country was a strong supporter of the liberation movement. Having closed its embassy in Zimbabwe in 2002, Denmark re-established its diplomatic presence in 2009 and will by the end of this year become the largest donor to Zimbabwe compared to its population.