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Vision 2030
Allen Choruma
THE time for looking up to outsiders to provide solutions to our problems is over.
We are an educated, hardworking and competitive people using these attributes for the development of our country in line with Vision 2030.
Zimbabwe has what it takes to be a successful country, abundant natural resources, and a young, dynamic and educated population.
We have a critical mass of skilled manpower at home and in the diaspora, which can be harnessed to support our development agenda. Further, Zimbabwe has abundant natural resources with over 40 different types of metals and minerals.
We have massive diamond reserves, the second largest platinum reserves (after South Africa).
Our great country has abundant wildlife and beautiful scenery to drive tourism, a good climate and 10 490 square kilometres of arable land suitable for commercial agricultural production.
We have the potential to once again become the “food basket” of Africa, following the historic and successful land reform programme which restored land to its rightful owners, the black majority indigenous African people.
These human and natural resources are enough to provide us with a base structure needed to achieve the superstructure, the Vision 2030, even five years ahead of time.
Yet, despite all these attributes, some among us continue to doubt our capabilities, often looking down upon ourselves — to the extent of thinking that anything foreign is a blueprint for our economic development and social transformation aspirations.
We need to move away from a dependency syndrome, which sees us extending “begging bowls” to countries and multilateral institutions that prescribed economic policies that killed our budding domestic industries and threw millions of our people into unemployment and poverty.
Why do we keep looking for “salvation” from Westerners that caused so much pain, trials and tribulations for our people? Countries that enslaved and colonised us and looted our resources with impunity?
Why would we think that these countries and the multilateral institutions they preside over have all of a sudden changed course and are now sincerely interested in our development and upliftment of our people from the depths of poverty?
Yes, Zimbabwe does not exist in a vacuum neither can it divorce itself from the global development financial architecture. We are very mindful of multilateralism, international development co-operation and the need to be part of the United Nations.
What I am simply saying is that for starters, we have to take pride in our great country, unite and work tirelessly for its development and prosperity.
Zimbabwe can only be recognised as a responsible and progressive global citizen if we the people of Zimbabwe are patriotic and serious about building and developing our country into a great nation for the benefit of current and future generations.
We need to realise that the Zimbabwe we want can only be created by none other than ourselves, using our own human capital and natural resources. We need to change our mind-sets and start believing in ourselves.
We need to define ourselves as a nation and not be defined by others.
Pan-African
Kwame Nkrumah once said: “We face neither East nor West, we face forward.”
Nkrumah’s wise words should help us change our mindset, which has chained us for decades, believing that we are not good enough and that everything foreign is better than our home-grown ideas and innovations.
Let us continue to look inward and face forward — the solution for Zimbabwe’s development resides within us.
Let us move away from the notion and thinking that foreign countries have a “magic wand” for Zimbabwe’s development and prosperity.
We should take advantage of this strong resource base and use it to create a vibrant emerging economy that is inclusive and creates wealth and employment opportunities for all Zimbabweans.
Former United States Ambassador to the African Union, Reuben Brigety (an African American), when interviewed by the New African (May 2015), remarked candidly as follows on foreign investors in Africa: “Their (investors) interest for doing business in Africa is not for the sake of African development. Their interest is business.”
As we move the nation towards Vision 2030 and beyond, let us be smart and innovative when we craft deals with foreign investors, let us engage serious and resourced investors so that we derive maximum benefit from our natural resources and do not simply dish them out for a pittance to dubious investors.
Our state universities should be mandated to develop home-grown technical skills in the fields of science and technology so that we can develop the technology and technical knowledge needed to drive our industrialisation projects.
We need to guard our natural resources jealously, desist from exporting primary low value commodities and focus on creation of beneficiation industries which will create thousands of jobs at home.
Our land, which is in our hands, should now be used productively, with unproductive land being repossessed and allocated those that can use it productively to produce enough food for domestic consumption and for export.
Value addition will be critical — making fruit juices from citrus fruits, coffee from coffee beans, milk products from milk, steel from our ferrochrome and iron, and jewellery from diamonds and gold.
Our central bank should start building gold reserves, and move away from selling all the gold we produce so that this resource, which we have abundantly, can change our development course.
It can also be used to stabilise our economy and national currency as we drive towards Vision 2030 and beyond.
Zimbabwe should focus on trading with other African countries to take advantage of opportunities offered under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the biggest single global trading bloc of 1,2 billion Africans with a cumulative GDP of US$3,4 trillion.
As 2020 nears its end, let us change our jaundiced view of our country and warped thinking that anything foreign is better than our home-grown solutions, inventions and made in Zimbabwe products.
As we stride towards Vision 2030, through the National Development Strategy 1 (2021-2025) and National Development Strategy 2 (2026-2030), the fight against corruption should not be forgotten as corruption threatens to barricade the road towards Vision 2030 and beyond.
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