Online Reporter
AMONG them, the countries of Africa can supply almost any raw material for any industrial process, can probably produce all the food we need and again when you look at the whole continent, many of the manufactured goods that Africans need are already made somewhere around.
The trouble is that we do not always look at each other as the obvious source of agricultural produce. Minerals, manufactured goods and a lot of trade is done outside the continent, even when continental sources are available, or through outsider middlemen moving African goods from one African country to another.
One example highlighted last week on the eve of President Mnangagwa’s weekend visit to Algeria, one of the largest and more developed African countries, was tobacco.
A routine visit by the Zimbabwean embassy staff to a cigarette factory found that this company does buy some Zimbabwean flue-cured Virginia tobacco, but through a middleman.
It was fairly easy to set in motion the necessary contacts so that the Algerian company could buy as much Zimbabwean tobacco as it wanted directly and indications are that this company will buy all its Virginia tobacco from Zimbabwe.
Missing out the middleman’s commission will also allow that to be split between more money for the Zimbabwean farmer at one end and lower costs for the final customer at the other.
There are many other examples where the embassy sees some good marketing would see more exports into Algeria, so long as the quality and price were right.
Tea, coffee, cotton and other tropical products have to be imported and Zimbabwean producers could earn a slice of that market. At the same time, Algeria has a flourishing petrochemical industry, and a growing manufacturing base, so trade should be two-way.
This is what was driving President Mnangagwa’s two-day State visit to Algeria, the need to improve trade and economic ties.
Political ties between the two countries are excellent, going right back to the liberation struggle, but not a lot has been done to see these grow into commercial ties between the businesses in the two countries.
With his pro-business stance and understanding, the President certainly sees Algeria, with the third largest gross domestic product in Africa, as a far more important trading partner than has been the case up to now.
As the Zimbabwean embassy seems to have noted, a lot of the low trade relations arise from businesses not really thinking of the other country as a source of supplies and markets.
One of the agreements signed during the President’s visit sought to put that right, with the establishment of a business forum that could translate the desire for more trade into more concrete examples of what could be traded, remembering that both countries are keen supporters of the African Continental Free Trade Area and so are committed to opening up intra-African trade.
We have been seeing disruptions in global trade in recent times, so besides the need to keep African money circulating more in Africa, there is the useful security of supply and markets from within the continent, since African countries, even when they disagree politically, go to some lengths to keep their trade routes open.
Africa has correctly identified trade as part of the solution to under development.
With the world’s largest single free trade area being formed on the continent, this should concentrate business minds when it comes to seeking materials and markets.
The continental market also overcomes that problem that many small countries face, of markets being too small for viable economies of scale.
African trade should also accelerate economic growth. When Africans buy from Africans the money they spend is still in Africa and can then be spent again in Africa.
Of course, ideology cannot drive trade; practical business people look at price and quality and need the right quality products at the right price, which includes any taxes and transport charges.
But creating a free trade area must open a lot of possibilities and the increasing competition within that area should ensure that quality producers rise to the top, wherever they are based.
What is needed is far more knowledge of potential suppliers and markets across Africa, that we start looking at our own first.
Almost all of Africa was colonised at some stage during the colonial era, and one result of that has been a tendency to look at the trade patterns set up in that era as the natural ones.
These are not just about the former coloniser, but often looked at trade within a colonial empire or among that empire and its friends.
More attention needs to be paid on using diplomacy for trade. The likelihood of far better tobacco sales in Algeria arose, after all, from embassy staff going to an Algerian factory and looking around and then offering practical advice on contacts.
And that insistence on looking at economic possibilities arose as a priority of President Mnangagwa at the start of the Second Republic.
Zimbabwean businesses and Zimbabwean trade organisations need to be more active in looking at markets across the continent.
The Government can help, especially with introductions, but in the end, a trade deal means a couple of businesspeople have made contact to buy and sell a product.
So, we need to ensure that businesspeople across the continent are willing to look across the continent.
