Online Reporter
Below is President Mnangagwa’s full address at the inaugural session of the Bi-National Commission between Zimbabwe and Zambia in Harare on Friday.
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IAM greatly honoured to welcome you, Your Excellency and Dear Brother, President (Hakainde) Hichilema, along with your delegation, to Zimbabwe, for the inaugural session of the Zimbabwe-Zambia Bi-National Commission.
Please feel at home for the duration of your stay in Zimbabwe. The people of Zimbabwe and Zambia are bound by one history, culture, family relations and common aspirations for prosperous economies and a higher quality of life.
We share a very long border, which was arbitrarily drawn by the former colonial power, separating families and communities.
Your Excellency, your visit affords us the opportunity to give impetus to ongoing efforts aimed at scaling up multi-pronged and mutually beneficial cooperation between our two countries.
As leaders, we have an inevitable duty to ensure that we leverage on each other’s comparative advantages and natural resource endowments to leap-forward the development, modernisation and industrialisation of our respective countries.
It is further opportune, Your Excellency and Dear Brother, that your visit comes against the backdrop of SADC’s determination to accelerate industrialisation through value addition and beneficiation of our rich natural resource endowments.
The region’s collective resolve to address pertinent challenges such as infrastructure gaps and climate change-induced shocks forms a critical background to this visit.
As we meet, therefore, we have a broader responsibility, not only in respect of our two nations, but in the context of our regional as well as continental aspirations.
In this regard, I commend our officials for timeously concluding the Bi-National Commission Agreement, which has made it possible for us to convene this inaugural session.
I am confident that this session will see us strengthen and deepen relations between our two countries, for mutual benefit.
I am pleased to note that, since our Senior Officials held the Mid-Term Review in September here in Harare, consultations and engagements remain ongoing among various ministries and departments towards implementing decisions agreed to thus far, while new areas of cooperation are being explored.
Evidence of work being done is the number of agreements and memoranda of understanding which are ready for signing during this session. This is commendable.
However, more work must be undertaken so that our strategic partnership delivers more benefits to our people, who are expectant of highly impactful results from our engagements. There is scope for greater cooperation to promote trade and mutual investments in transport, infrastructure, energy, mining and agriculture; among many others.
I urge our Ministers and Senior Officials to be deliberate and results oriented in all exchanges, to bring life and meaning to the decisions of this Bi-National Commission.
In this respect, cooperation in sectors such as energy and transport infrastructure remain critical, more so that good transport networks are enablers to trade, investment and development between our two countries as well as regional integration.
I, therefore, commend the progress made in the conceptualisation of the Lion’s Den-Kafue Railway Project.
I call upon the responsible ministries, departments and agencies to work tirelessly to move the project forward. Let me also hasten to say that for development to happen in our two countries; peace, security and stability have to be assured.
The Defence Security services of our two countries have always been in close consultations and cooperation, as illustrated by the convening of the Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security in March 2025.
I encourage the security services to remain vigilant in the midst of the ever-changing and new security threats such as terrorism, drug trafficking and cyber-crimes, among others.
Your Excellency, my Government continues to implement robust programmes towards modernising, industrialising and growing our economy.
As a result of deliberate policies and programmes in our agriculture sector, we have realised household food security and are now focused on value addition and beneficiation of the unprecedented surpluses we are now realising across all agro-sub sectors.
Further, my Government has taken bold measures towards countering the effects of climate change. Water harvesting remains critical to climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as complementing rain-fed agriculture production systems.
The full utilisation of dams and conveyancing around our water infrastructure is top priority. At community level, we are drilling boreholes across our 35 000 villages and establishing village business units and nutritional gardens.
We have also launched agriculture production booster kits, which will see small holder farmers being supported by Government with irrigation equipment to cover one-hectare plots.
There remains great scope between our two countries for cooperation in the agriculture sector. In respect of the mining sector, immense potential lies in the growing demand for new minerals.
I challenge our officials to pursue avenues of cooperation that will see Zimbabwe and Zambia harness their resource endowments to tap into the opportunities associated with the green energy revolution and our entry into global value chains.
The overarching goal is that our rich natural resource endowments must benefit our two economies and primarily our people.
As Zimbabwe and Zambia, we share Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Victoria Falls. Cooperation and complementarity in improving tourist products and services in both the City of Victoria Falls and Livingstone must be strengthened.
Positive spill-offs from increased tourist arrivals must accrue to the communities, which are the immediate stewards of the Victoria Falls, over and above our respective national economies.
Joint marketing of other tourist destinations within our two countries should be promoted. Education and skills development remain critically important to propel our socio-economic aspirations.
Cooperation between our two countries and sharing of lessons in education, as well as vocational and technical training, should be prioritised.
Our young people must be equipped to modernise and industrialise our countries through their own innovations, based on our unique heritage and natural resource endowments.
Your Excellency, Zimbabwe continues to draw notable benefits from the successful implementation of the Engagement and Re-engagement Policy.
Allow me, therefore, to take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude to you, and our brothers and sisters of the Republic of Zambia, for contributing, in various ways, to the resounding success that characterised Zimbabwe’s hosting of the 44th SADC Summit and ancillary events.
On broader regional issues, it is undesirable that inter- and intra-state conflicts continue to threaten successful implementation of the regional and continental development agenda.
We remain concerned over the security and humanitarian situation in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We are confident that ongoing efforts of the region, and the international community, will bear fruit.
Cessation of violence, securing lasting peace and ensuring that the people of Eastern DRC can benefit and contribute to regional development remain our desire and priority.
In concluding, I once again welcome you, Your Excellency, to this historic working visit. I challenge us all to approach our engagements with a sense of urgency as we redouble efforts towards deepening our mutually beneficial and strategic cooperation.
I wish us all fruitful deliberations.
God bless you all.
God bless Zimbabwe.
I thank you
