Zimbabwe has valuable lessons to share with Sadc

AFTER the approval of the SADC Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap (2015-2063) at an extraordinary summit held in Zimbabwe in April 2015, the bloc’s Council of Ministers adopted a decision in 2016 to convene the SADC Industrialisation Week (SIW) annually on the margins of the summit of Heads of State and Government.

The annual gathering essentially gives the private sector, international partners, policymakers, researchers, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), financial institutions and civil society a platform to share experiences, explore opportunities and collaborate on strategies to drive industrialisation and economic transformation in the region.

Promoting industrialisation, it is envisaged, will drive economic growth, create employment, lift millions of people in the region out of poverty and create prosperous societies. The first SIW was held in Eswatini in 2016, followed by one in South Africa (2017), Namibia (2018), Tanzania (2019), Malawi (2021) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (2022).

However, there was no industrialisation week in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The seventh edition begins in Harare today and will be officially opened by President Mnangagwa on Wednesday.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which incidentally affected the 2020 edition of the SIW, in addition to highlighting our woeful vulnerabilities as a region and continent, underlined the urgent need to promote local manufacturing of critical products.

In the desperate scramble for limited life-saving vaccines from constrained global manufacturers, African countries were put at the back of the queue.

This episode all but shined a light on not only African countries’ overreliance and dependence on imports but also the worrying lack of productive capacity.

It is believed that up to 90 percent of drugs consumed and 99 percent of vaccines administered in most countries in Africa are imported. Experts say, with limited research and development, much of the technical innovation happens abroad, meaning intellectual property is also held overseas, making licensing and technology transfer critical.

However, most often than not, commercial manufacturers have in many cases declined to transfer the knowledge on how to create these products to African manufacturers. Therein lies the motivation to promote rapid industrialisation in the region and on the continent.

It should be borne in mind that the major challenge facing most countries in the region is transforming their economies from being resource-dependent to ones that produce value-added products.

And this makes the theme of this year’s SADC Industrialisation Week, “Promoting Innovation to Unlock Opportunities for Sustainable Economic Growth and Development Towards an Industrialised SADC”, timely and relevant.

Perhaps most critically, this year’s host, Zimbabwe, which now boasts one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, notwithstanding having to bear deleterious sanctions from the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, has valuable lessons to share with its regional peers.

Under an extraordinarily difficult environment, it has managed to reorient its education system through the heritage-based Education 5.0 system, which encourages innovation and problem-solving, and has also invested in innovation hubs at institutions of higher learning to harvest the collective ingenuity of its young demographic.

This emphasis has spawned new industries such as the multi-million-dollar medical oxygen and industrial gas plant at Feruka in Mutare, which is already supplying products to some regional countries.

Similarly, the Mapfura plant in Mwenezi established in 2022 has proved to be a godsend for some rural communities in Masvingo that have seen their incomes rise, especially at a time when climate change is threatening traditional sources of income and, by extension, lives and livelihoods.

Huge investments in infrastructure development, financed through internally generated resources and largely undertaken by local contractors, are gradually building internal industrial capacities along value chains.

The Midlands State University’s US$11 million modified coal tar plant is a case in point. Further, the rehabilitation of the Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu highway — a key arterial route in the North-South Corridor — is likely to boost regional trade, business and commerce, thereby enhancing regional integration. Backing the local currency with gold reserves to create a stable macro-economic environment conducive to industrial and economic growth is another trailblazing project Zimbabwe can share with its peers.

The model is now being replicated in several African countries.

All this wealth of experience will be handy for Zimbabwe as it takes over the chairmanship of the regional bloc.

But a lot of challenges to the broader regional aspirations remain, not least the threat posed by climate change.

For example, the United Nations says an estimated 60 million people in Southern Africa were left food-insecure by the El Niño-induced drought that effected the 2023/2024 cropping season.

This is concerning, as agriculture is the mainstay of many economies in the region, providing the much-needed raw materials for agro-industries. On its part, Zimbabwe, however, has since embarked on an accelerated programme that is expected to put 350 000 hectares under irrigation by next year. So, this week’s SIW is immensely important insofar as it provides the platform to chart the future of our region.

A lot of work lies ahead.