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George Maponga–Masvingo Bureau
First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa has been hailed for helping society to appreciate the importance of traditional foods, which have immense health benefits.
Dr Mnangagwa, who is also the country’s tourism ambassador, seeks to ensure the emergence of a healthy citizenry countrywide through the cookout competition she started and handed over to provinces. The cookout competitions have seen women from all the country’s 10 provinces competing in showcasing their cooking skills particularly traditional foods, which are now the in-thing owing to their health benefits.
The development has also opened prospects for culinary tourism where a nation cashes in on its traditional foods through selling them to the outside world.
Last year, the national cookout competition was held in Victoria Falls and this year, they are set for Chinhoyi, Mashonaland West Province.
Speaking during the Masvingo provincial cookout competition yesterday, Deputy Minister of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Barbara Rwodzi, hailed the First Lady for introducing the cook-out competitions.
“This programme that was initiated by our First Lady is very important and I think everyone here realises how important it is and some of the contestants here were even openly saying it because they now know what is found in Zimuto in terms of traditional foods.
“We also now know what is found in Masvingo so we want to thank Amai (First Lady) for this well-thought programme,” said Deputy Minister Rwodzi.
She also underscored the importance of promoting traditional foods in developing Zimbabwe’s culinary tourism industry, which has the potential to grow the economy through job creation and forex earnings.
“These cookout competitions can also be looked at in the context of devolution because we will be able to tell that in Masvingo, such traditional foods can be found here and there, so that at the end of the day, we know what is available in Masvingo and it is these things that we will bring together at the national (cookout) finals and say these are the foods and drinks that are found in Zimbabwe.”
“So we want to really thank the First Lady for all this,” said Deputy Minister Rwodzi.
This year’s national cookout final competitions are expected to be graced by the First Lady in Chinhoyi, in honour of Mashonaland West province which produced the winner of last year’s competitions.
Sad Deputy Minister Rwodzi: “At the finals in Mashonaland West province, our expectation is that Masvingo will come out tops because we will be holding the regional (SADC) finals here at the home of the Great Zimbabwe because our patron, our mother the First Lady, said let’s go to Masvingo, the province that carries the history of our nation.”
She said Masvingo has potential to be one of the country’s tourism hubs because of its vast tourist attraction sites and friendly people, urging the province to take advantage of the impending SADC regional finals to showcase the province’s tourism products.
Minister of State for Masvingo Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Ezra Chadzamira, encouraged women to choose the natural when cooking, saying this has lots of health benefits.
Minister Chadzamira thanked the First Lady for promoting traditional foods that were key in fighting diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
There were 19 contestants at the cookout provincial finals in Masvingo, and Mrs Dzidzai Chikumbo of Rhodene suburb, emerged victorious.
Each of the contestants received a food hamper from Deputy Minister Rwodzi.
Online Reporter