Zim citizens in NZ rally behind national development

Wallace Ruzvidzo in HAMILTON, New Zealand

ZIMBABWEANS living in New Zealand have pledged to contribute meaningfully to the country’s current development agenda pursuant to Vision 2030.

President Mnangagwa has continued to reiterate the importance of the Diaspora community in the country’s development trajectory and ultimately in the realisation of an upper middle income economy by 2030.

To this end, a high-tech state-of-the-art dairy farm is expected to be established in Zimbabwe, in collaboration with the country’s universities.

This will see the country’s milk production deficit significantly reduced and eventually the country’s dairy requirements met.

In an interview this week, Africa New Zealand Business Council member, Munya Chitongo, said they were looking forward to transfering the expertise they gained over the years for Zimbabwe’s exponential benefit.

New Zealand only requires 5 percent of its total milk production and the rest is exported.

Mr Chitongo said such intellectual property would greatly benefit the country.

“I am involved with Africa New Zealand Business Council and our goal is to open up trade between Africa and New Zealand,” he said. “Obviously our goal is to assist the country to meet its goal of an upper middle income economy by 2030 and we can only do so if we are productive as a country.

“We want to see if we can take the expertise and intellectual property that we have here to Zimbabwe because this is what improves our productivity.”

Mr Chitongo said Memoranda of Understanding would soon be signed between the New Zealand based consortium and tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe.

“We have talked to universities in the Zimbabwe delegation and we will be creating MoUs, so our goal is to start a dairy farm in Zimbabwe in the near future,” he said.

“We are hoping it will be a training ground to further train locals in Zimbabwe. We have learnt from the best in the dairy sector here in New Zealand and we can take the expertise back to Zimbabwe.

“I have over five years of dairy farming in New Zealand and together with my partners we have over 44 years of experience combined and all my partners and we all have one goal to go back home and start a dairy farm in Zimbabwe.”

The ultimate goal, Mr Chitongo said, was to contribute meaningfully to the country’s endeavour to retain its bread-basket status.

“Hopefully we will meet the local demand because we know that we have a huge deficit that we need to cover, but we know that with our skills and experiences here we can help the country meet the demand,” he said.

“Once the country has met its demand our goal is to export the oversupply, so we are looking forward to starting a dairy farm and creating jobs in the agricultural sector. We also want tp take software innovation in New Zealand so that we can improve our agriculture sector in Zimbabwe.”

In an interview, Marondera University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology’s founding Vice Chancellor, Professor Justice Nyamangara, said they had already signed an agreement with Africa Dairy Pastures, a consortium of New Zealand based Zimbabweans.

He said the tertiary institution wanted to help increase the country’s milk production.

“As a university we already have an MoU with Africa Dairy Pastures which is composed of Zimbabweans based here in New Zealand,” he said.

“We are going to establish a dairy unit for both production and training students because the aim is to have a certain threshold of students who are capable of running their dairy units. As you know Zimbabwe has got a huge gap so we want to close that gap and improve the quality.

“We have learnt quite a lot, I think the learning point is that their genetics are very developed and also the emphasis on feeding the genetics so that the nutrition helps in both the volume and quality of the milk.”

Chinhoyi University of Technology Vice Chancellor Professor David Jambgwa Simbi said participating at the Fieldays had been an eye opener.

He said as a tertiary institution they had learnt the importance of farmers working together to create a beneficial value chain system.

The Zimbabwean delegation also yesterday convened an interactive session with New Zealand’s Livestock Improvement Centre which expressed interest in assisting Zimbabwe improve its national herd.