Zim can change Angola’s food narrative

Zimbabwe is a fairly balanced economy, strong in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, tourism and hospitality, financial services and other industries.

That diversified economy is broadly owned and driven by locals as well.  The biggest banks, mobile communications firms, tourism and hospitality facilities, factories, and agricultural enterprises in the country are owned and run by locals.

These and other factors make our economy quite unlike the typical African one, often mono and foreign-owned.  

Africa has a lot to learn from us.  

Angola will soon learn from our massive agricultural success story, one that we built from scratch since 2000, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, to the boom of today.  Tobacco output is booming, as is maize, wheat, blueberries, citrus fruits, sugar cane and livestock.

Speaking to journalists in Luanda, Angola, where he attended that country’s 50th independence anniversary on Tuesday, President Mnangagwa hailed the strong ties between the two countries dating back to our liberation struggle.   

“Already, we have very excellent economic relations with Angola. Yes, of course, the question of distance is there, but Angola has resources like oil and so on, and they are well developed, so we can benefit from what they have,” he said.

“And as you are aware, Zimbabwe is an agricultural country, and they also want to develop their agricultural sector. 

“We will discuss these issues, so I believe that we can co-operate in that sector.”

That expansive country of 39 million people has fertile soils, a favourable climate and 35 million hectares of farmland.

A 2021 Angola Government report says that before independence in 1975, the country was a big exporter of coffee and sugar, among other crops.  

However, its liberation war from 1961 to 1974, and the civil war that raged from 1975 to 2002, disrupted the sector as millions fled the rural areas for relative safety in towns and cities.  

The 40 years of armed conflict left previously arable land riddled with landmines and other unexploded ordnance, thus uncultivable.  

Resultantly, only 10 percent of Angola’s arable land is under cultivation.  Also, the country imports 50 percent of its food requirements mainly from Portugal, Brazil, the US, South Africa, Malaysia and Thailand.

Indeed, there is a load of work that Angola must do to grow its agricultural industry.

Zimbabwe has the will and capacity to contribute to the success of that drive.

We reported yesterday that some local agriculture extension workers are already working in Angola.  We are confident that they are showcasing their skills there, transferring them to their hosts in the process.  

They, too, must be contributing to the development of the agriculture industry in that country, which must have encouraged President Joao Lourenco to begin a conversation with President Mnangagwa on the plan to scale the collaboration.

Beyond the boots of the extension workers on the ground, Zimbabwe can also export higher-level agriculture personnel to champion the planning, policy formulation and management in Angola’s agriculture ministry.

Furthermore, Angola, with all that unutilised, underutilised land, can allocate farms to some of our people so that they can move over there and use their expertise to establish centres of agricultural excellence at which Angolans can learn the more practical, professional and business side of farming.