Online Reporter
Wallace Ruzvidzo
Herald Reporter
INFORMATION, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Dr Zhemu Soda is expected to lead a delegation to China as Harare and Beijing deepen their cooperation in the media industry.
This came out yesterday when Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe Zhou Ding paid a courtesy call on Minister Soda at his Munhumutapa offices.
Speaking to the media after their closed-door meeting, the Information Minister said the scaling up of cooperation between the two countries in the media sector was an imperative.
“Like you heard from His Excellency, the Ambassador to China, that he called on me today to discuss on how we can deepen our cooperation in the media.
“We had a very fruitful discussion in here and also that I will be leading a delegation in a week or two to China, where we will continue to strengthen our cooperation in the area of media and information and the way we should be communicating, but ultimately for the betterment of the growth of our economies.
“You are aware that if we don’t communicate well, then we will be doing a disservice to the growth of our economy,” he said.
Minister Soda said he is hopeful that his upcoming trip to China will bear fruit, enabling Zimbabwe to gain valuable lessons on the most effective ways to inform the world about developments in the country.
“There are some services, there are some products which we are producing here in the country, including even our culture, which we should be popularising, but all that can get to be known when we are communicating with other jurisdictions.
“So we will be in China just to take a leaf from how they have been able to deal with the issue of media, the issue of information, as a way or as a medium for leveraging growth of the economy,” he said.
On his part, Ambassador Zhou said during their meeting they had also discussed the need for Zimbabwe and China to make concerted efforts towards countering misinformation and disinformation.
“We talked about how in the future we strengthen our cooperation in this area and also we talked about how we should jointly counter disinformation, misinformation, which is also an important topic.
“Zimbabwe is a prosperous country, Zimbabwe has huge potential that is why I think it is very important that we jointly counter misinformation, disinformation to make sure that Zimbabwe continues to enjoy political stability and also economic prosperity,” he said.
The Chinese diplomat said his country would continue implementing programmes and projects in Zimbabwe.
He added that in the past year China had drilled 300 boreholes in addition to the many that it had drilled before.
“We will be implementing more of these kinds of projects. We will also be doing irrigation projects and also solar-powered classrooms, clinics, this kind of thing.
“And also we will continue to encourage our medical teams and agriculture expert teams to implement their programmes and their projects here in Zimbabwe to benefit the Zimbabwean people,” said Ambassador Zhou.
