Online Reporter
ZIMBABWE has been progressing swiftly under the Second Republic, with high rates of economic growth and balanced development as infrastructure is modernised and expanded.
Even during the last severe drought, and the serious negative effect on agriculture, the nation as a whole recorded respectable if not spectacular growth and progress as other sectors took the strain and delivered.
The financial side has seen good progress with not just getting the budgeting and Government expenditure right, but also seeing the return of a respectable local currency and low rates of inflation after years of economic challenges.
On the social side we have seen a major leap in the public health sector and the consolidation and reinvigoration of education through the Heritage-based Education 5.0, demanding that school and college students must be able to apply their theoretical knowledge.
President Mnangagwa, reflecting on the progress this week during an interview in Harare, made it clear that the nation did need to measure its progress, and that each year, regardless of circumstances, should be better for the people than the previous year.
He also noted, importantly, that continually progressing and moving forward into new territory would, sometimes and inevitably, involve mistakes or a wrong turn. But so long as we were alert when this happened, it would be relatively easy to cut losses and move forward on a better path.
Too often in the past, some progress in both public and private sectors has been minimised because people were so terrified of making a mistake that they just stood totally still, instead of innovating and pushing ahead. You also get the problem that some refuse to recognise that a mistake might have occurred and carry on relentlessly down the wrong path.
Both dangers will stifle progress and development. As the President noted, and with his experience, he has seen all the dangers . . . being terrified of making a mistake is in itself a serious error.
We are all human, none of us is perfect, and progress demands we continually enter new territory as we innovate, adapt and press forward. The trick is to be able to correct mistakes before much damage is done, continuously learn, and then try something better to reach our desired goals.
At the same time, we also need to be able to exploit success so we speed up progress. And both the navigation around dangers and the faster push forward are helped with some planning and making sure all those ventures are in reasonable balance, so it is easy to switch, easier to move around an obstacle and easier to exploit a clear run forward.
President Mnangagwa has always placed a high level of importance on the youth, both because if we are to move forward fast we cannot just press youth into following in the footsteps of those who went before and secondly because they usually can cope with innovation and change rather well.
While their efforts in progress are largely self-generated, they must be prepared with the maximum levels of useful skills and some practical experience of using those skills, hence the education reforms that both stress modern technical knowledge and show how this can be applied in practical settings.
Other than that, what is needed is decent support for those prepared to work hard to implement good ideas and to make sure the doors of opportunity are open, with no one and no place left behind.
We need to recognise that our national progress is the totality of a lot of individual, family and community progress. Few people setting out on some new venture or new course are driven by much else than a desire to make a decent living and ensure their children in time will have a better life than they did.
It is when we add everything together that we get to Vision 2030, the country’s national development blueprint to establish an empowered, prosperous upper middle-income economy.
That again reinforces the need to have everyone moving forward, reinforcing each other’s progress and often providing markets, products and services for each other, which again adds value and so keeps us all on track towards our shared vision.
