Online Reporter
Golden Sibanda, recently in Maputo Mozambique
Zimbabwean companies that participated in the Mozambique Agriculture, Commercial and Industrial Fair (FACIM), held in the capital, Maputo, from August 25 to 31 have described their involvement as a huge success. They say it opened new leads and opportunities to grow their exports into the Mozambican market and beyond.
ZimTrade said FACIM, one of the largest multi-sectoral exhibitions in the region, was important to drive the growth of Zimbabwean exports in line with the national trade promotion agenda.
The 2025 edition of FACIM builds on other trade facilitation programmes that ZimTrade organised in Mozambique earlier this year, such as the Beira Outward Mission, which provided an opportunity for Zimbabwean companies to engage directly with Mozambican distributors and wholesalers.
For this year’s exhibition, the Zimbabwean national trade promotion and development body facilitated the participation of 20 companies, although 14 eventually managed to take part.
These companies, both large and small-scale, were from key sectors, including manufacturing, protective clothing (leather footwear and garments), retail, distribution, engineering, agro-processing, life assurance and transport and logistics, among others.
Among the companies that showcased their wares and services were car battery maker Chloride Exide, the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), piping systems producer Proplastics, handcrafted products manufacturer Golden Hands Leather Products, medical gases manufacturer Verify Engineering, leather safety footwear and safety garments producer Triple Tee Limited, and handicrafts supplier Tsisam Trading.
Exide Express, a unit of ART Corporation and a sister company of Chloride Zimbabwe, country manager for Mozambique, Mr Lloyd Machinga, described FACIM as a stepping stone towards accelerating export growth in the Mozambican market.
“This exhibition has been a success because we managed to record some sales and established new leads with some key dealers, which is very important in our distribution network,” Mr Machinga said. “As you are aware, we have branches here in Maputo and in Beira, so this exhibition played a very critical part in opening up other areas for us so that we are able to service these areas, like Zambezi and Nampula, because we have partners that we have managed to encounter through the exhibition.”
NRZ spokesperson Mr Andrew Kunambura said the state rail operator’s objectives were largely achieved after the company managed to hold engagements with various key stakeholders to discuss potential new business and possible ways to improve current services.
“We came here to expand our markets, increase our volumes to Maputo and to Zimbabwe. We got a number of cross-sectional inquiries on our operations from people in civils, people in mechanical and various other stakeholders who visited our stand,” Mr Kunambura said. “We believe that what we got here is going to assist us to move forward. We are going to do follow-ups on the inquiries that we got here so that we can increase our volumes for exports and imports.”
He added: “We are also very happy that we got support from our embassy here. A few things were discussed and we are also happy that we were given prominence at this exhibition through the visit to our stand by Her Excellency, the Prime Minister of Mozambique (Maria Benvinda Levi), where we were given an opportunity to say a few things about the exhibition.
“We believe that this support that we got from our embassy and from the Government of Mozambique is going to improve our relationship with all our stakeholders, including our partners CFM (Mozambique’s state rail company).”
Several small companies, which were part of the Zimbabwean entourage exhibiting at FACIM, also commended the platform as critical in putting their products in the international limelight after significant and promising inquiries were made for their products.
Mr Hilary Hilman, from Legacy Logistica, which represents leather safety footwear and safety garments maker Triple Tee Limited, said there had been huge inquiries about the company’s products during the trade fair, indicating the huge potential for growth in the market.
“The way I would describe this year’s edition of FACIM, regarding the products that we showcased here, is that we had a good response and Zimbabwean companies must come and invest more here because they have a large number of potential customers,” he said.
Mr Hilman said the company was confident they could potentially translate several engagements with potential buyers during the Maputo trade exhibition into sales, possibly running into hundreds of thousands of US dollars.
The founder, marketing and technical executive of Golden Hands Leather Products, Mr Thomas Paul Mupingo, said this was the second time his company had participated in FACIM.
He noted that the platform had created numerous potential leads, which his company would pursue to close sales. He said there was huge interest in his company’s range of leather products during the exhibition in Maputo, given the strong global reputation of the quality of Zimbabwean leather.
ZimTrade export promotion manager, Mrs Vuyiswa Mafu, said FACIM remained a critical platform to promote Zimbabwean exports into Mozambique and the wider region, given that the country was already an important export channel for the country’s shipments via the ports of Beira and Maputo.
“We believe it’s a good forum; it’s a good opportunity for the country to showcase its products to this market, to Mozambique. In fact, not just to Mozambique: there are other countries participating here as well. At our pavilion, we had a diverse range of products from the 14 companies that took part, and all of them did have good inquiries and we will assist them to follow up,” she said.
“But we also noted that the proximity of South Africa to this side of Mozambique, Maputo, requires that we have a strategy whereby we set up here or have distributors to represent them in this market so that the products are within easy reach, because you find that by coming here and showcasing your products, the customers are potentially interested and the next question is ‘Where do we get the products?’
“It is important that they find distributors or set up here, and a couple of companies or even more have already done that with good results. So, going forward we believe that FACIM is a very good show, which we can use to introduce as many other Zimbabwean companies to this market as possible so that this assists us to grow trade with this market.”
ZimTrade’s external trade promotion efforts align with the objectives of Zimbabwe’s National Export Strategy, which aims to increase national exports by at least 10 percent annually, from US$4,5 billion in 2018 to US$14 billion by 2030, helping the country to achieve its vision of an upper-middle-income status.
Under the Second Republic, which assumed power in 2017, Zimbabwe has an explicit policy objective to achieve export-led growth, as outlined in Zimbabwe Vision 2030, through fostering a conducive business environment to attract foreign investment and value-addition.
Furthermore, Zimbabwe’s Heritage-Based Education 5.0 philosophy integrates heritage with innovation and industrialisation to produce for local and global markets while also training graduates who are job creators rather than job seekers by leveraging traditional knowledge and contemporary technologies like artificial intelligence.
