Hon Shakemore Timburwa-The Strategic State
A factory can be privately owned, yet its prospects depend on decisions taken far beyond its gates.
Its machinery requires electricity; its workers require training; its products require roads, standards and access to buyers. The investor brings capital and commercial judgment, but the usefulness of that capital depends partly on an organised public environment.
Within this ordinary fact lies a substantial part of the relationship between the State and the market. The familiar question of which should lead development is, therefore, incomplete.
National direction and commercial initiative perform different functions within the same economic process. Government must consider interests and time horizons extending beyond any single enterprise.
Businesses must discover what can be produced, at what cost and for which customers. Development advances when these responsibilities become mutually reinforcing, allowing public purpose to find expression in productive activity.
For Zimbabwe, President Mnangagwa’s Vision 2030 provides the national horizon within which this relationship can be understood. The aspiration towards an empowered and prosperous upper-middle-income society invites a practical inquiry: how can public leadership and private investment combine to expand the country’s productive abilities?
The significance of that inquiry reaches beyond the volume of investment secured. It concerns the skills, enterprises and economic opportunities that investment leaves behind. Markets are valuable partly because knowledge is dispersed. A farmer understands conditions on a particular holding; a manufacturer recognises changes in demand; an entrepreneur identifies an opportunity that established businesses have overlooked.
Prices and competition help coordinate these separate judgments. Public policy can draw upon this knowledge through regular engagement with producers, while maintaining a wider view of infrastructure, education and national development priorities. Some essential investments, however, benefit many participants simultaneously.
A road serves communities and enterprises that could not individually finance it. Technical education prepares people whose knowledge may pass through several industries during their working lives.
The returns to these investments extend beyond the organisation undertaking them. Public provision and coordination help establish foundations upon which a larger range of commercial activities becomes possible.
This relationship is especially important where investments depend on one another. A processor needs reliable agricultural supplies before committing to a plant. Farmers need confidence that a buyer will exist before expanding production. Both may require electricity, water and transport improvements.
Each decision can be reasonable in isolation, yet investment may remain delayed because the participants cannot proceed together. Here, government can help organise the sequence that makes their commitments credible. Singapore offers an instructive example of institutional organisation.
Established in 1961, its Economic Development Board helped implement an industrialisation strategy in which infrastructure and investment promotion were closely connected.
Skills development also became part of the effort to attract and sustain more sophisticated production. The useful lesson is that an investment proposition becomes stronger when institutions can connect a commercial opportunity with the practical conditions required to realise it.
Zimbabwe must apply that principle through its own geography, resources and institutions.
Singapore’s maritime position and compact territory differ markedly from the circumstances of a landlocked economy with extensive agricultural and mineral resources. These differences affect transport costs, infrastructure requirements and the location of enterprise. Comparative experience is valuable when it helps identify the questions Zimbabwe must answer in developing its own approach.
One practical application would be a sector investment compact: an agreed programme connecting public infrastructure, skills development and business commitments within a defined timetable.
In agricultural processing, for example, the programme could bring together producers, a processor, financiers, training institutions and the relevant public authorities. It would specify who undertakes each investment, which decisions depend on others and how progress will be reviewed. Its purpose would be to make an economically promising relationship workable.
Such an arrangement would require judgment about what public support should achieve. Emerging activities may need time to develop skills, establish suppliers and reach efficient production levels. Assistance can enable that learning.
Yet prolonged assistance may also weaken the incentive to improve, while an abrupt withdrawal can interrupt a viable undertaking before it matures.
The serious policy challenge is to distinguish progress requiring patience from arrangements requiring redesign. Support should therefore have a defined purpose and a review process suited to the activity.
Relevant measures might include worker training, productivity improvements, product quality and commercially sustainable orders. Assessment should consider the public commitments on which business performance depends. Where an electricity connection or transport improvement forms part of the programme, its delivery belongs within the same review.
Evaluation then becomes a means of identifying constraints and assigning responsibility for resolving them. There is also a question of opportunity cost.
Public resources committed to one activity are unavailable for another. A proposal deserves consideration in relation to its likely wider benefits, the contribution expected from investors and the alternatives available.
Shared infrastructure or technical training may sometimes benefit a broader range of enterprises than assistance confined to one producer. Choosing between these approaches requires evidence and attention to the circumstances of each sector. The division of responsibilities should remain practical.
