Minister Shava meets Lukashenko

Mukudzei Chingwere

Herald Reporter

As Zimbabwe seeks to deepen economic collaboration with Belarus, the Government has sent a delegation to Minsk to start making concrete moves of operationalising issues that were agreed on when President Mnangagwa met Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, when he visited Harare early this year.

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Ambassador Frederick Shava, is leading the delegation, which includes agriculture experts, ZimTrade officials, and those from the Department of Civil Protection, among others.

Yesterday, Ambassador Shava met President Lukashenko, and discussed a number of issues aimed at strengthening relations.

“There are excellent relations between Zimbabwe and Belarus and through those excellent relations, we explore possibilities of cooperation especially in the field that you mentioned, in agriculture,” said Ambassador Shava after meeting President Lukashenko.

“Belarus has been very helpful to Zimbabwe by providing tractors and other agricultural implements for use in Zimbabwe in order to ensure that Zimbabwe is food secure.

“We are fully utilising that option and we hope that through visits like this one, we can improve, increase our activities in agriculture.

“We have had very fruitful discussions with the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Sergei Aleinik) and he has been able to facilitate that part of my delegation to do with agriculture meet their counterparts in Belarus, those to do with civil protection also met their counterparts in Belarus and those to deal with trade have been able to meet with their counterparts in Belarus.”

Ambassador Shava said Zimbabwe’s desire was that the capabilities of Belarus could also be transferred to Zimbabwe and that in terms of manufacturing we could manufacture certain things in Zimbabwe with Belarusian technology.

“Similarly, we could develop new products. It is our hope that if we increase the beneficiation of products in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe can indeed become a hub for the region in terms of the products we would have been able to produce with Belarus,” said Ambassador Shava.