The Sunday News
Richard Mahomva
Zimbabwe’s participation in US-Africa Business Summit recently held in Mozambique substantiates the resourceful efforts of the State in consolidating the re-engagement agenda.
Our foreign policy reconstruction signals the imperative direction to national development.
This is against a backdrop of the misrepresentation of the country’s image as a pariah state. The country’s efforts towards readjusting its external relations is critical in mapping the prospects of socio-economic growth. In his remarks on the success of this summit President Emmerson Mnangagwa is quoted: “I managed to meet top US Government officials and we discussed issues pertaining to the repeal of Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and we reaffirmed our position to continue making further progress to harness our democratic processes’’.
A noteworthy streak in President Mnangagwa has come out since he assumed office. He is a man who carries the weight of changing Zimbabwe from the old to the new and his tack and task is to project a Zimbabwe that is in reform.
The precedence set by his turn to reform justifies Zimbabwe’s escape from isolation to openness progressive engagement.
Zimbabwe attended this inter-continental summit at the invitation of Mozambique and this affirms the extent to which Zimbabwe is being held with high esteem and respect in the continent. Moreover, this clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the country’s commitment to the re-engagement agenda and how the same avenue could be explored to respond to immediate development mandates.
Through this summit President Mnangagwa highlighted that Zimbabwe managed to acquire concessions which will boost the energy sector: “Zimbabwe will be able to get a gas pipeline linking Zimbabwe and Mozambique and this will increase energy options. There are also opportunities for Zimbabwe’s private sector which will increase foreign direct investment as Zimbabwe is open for business,” he said.
The platform was also critical as it gave Zimbabwe an opportunity to articulate its re-engagement agenda outside the political nuances of its erstwhile relations with the US which were largely hostile. The platform centred more on economic engagement than it was political.
A host of private sector entities topped the summit’s delegates list. This means there was more to the economic notion of diplomacy during this conference and as such, the political limitations to Zimbabwe-US re-engagement were circumvented.
However, it is important to note that Zimbabwe’s presence at such a forum is a clear indicator of how much the current administration is committed to opening its doors to the world in the humble interest of sharing ideas, possibilities of economic growth and investment opportunities.
Zimbabwe’s opening up to the world calls for the realignment of various laws to the vision of the Second-Republic. This means that our laws must cushion free movement and cub illicit financial flows. Borders remain a restraint to the dissemination of innovation and ground-breaking initiatives. Borders limit the movement of talent and rich ideas which are born out of our people’s will to re-create the conditions of our people’s economic immerseration. Coloniality is reproduced in the manner the freedom of movement is still arrested by the need to adopt a single African passport.
Travel regulations and narrow inclines to belonging are the reason why entrepreneurial efforts in certain countries in Africa suffer still-birth.
Many at times enterprise is not given expansion beyond the home country and yet the Multi-National Company reality in Africa is an irony that we still complement and yet we fail to re-tool and re-frame enterprise to extend outside national borders.
We celebrate and aid the expansion of Multi-Nationals in Africa and deny the potential of our very own to flourish outside our borders. The urgency of economic indigenisation is viewed as retrogressive and aggressive to prospects of nurturing Foreign Direct Invest (FDI).
The triumph of the FDI dependency model is the major reason for the major reason why domestic business growth will suffer less experimentation.
On the other hand, attempts to avoid the border and beating the bottle necks of freedom of movement has seen an escalation in “border-jumping” related crime, chief among these being the sexual harassment of women and the girl-child.
At the same time, female cross-border traders endure various forms of abuse from customs officers. These very same cross-border traders contribute en mass to the Gross Domestic Product (s) of their mother-countries and host nations.
It needs not to be omitted that in the process Africa has privileged looting over empowering local innovation. Patrick Bond — a political-economy scholar notes that:
Africa is poor, ultimately, because its economy and society have been ravaged by international capital as well as by local elites who are often propped up by foreign powers.
The public and private sectors have worked together to drain the continent of resources which — if harnessed and shared fairly — should otherwise meet the needs of the peoples of Africa. Changes in “governance” — for example revolutions — are desperately needed for social progress, and these entail not only the empowerment of “civil society” but also the strengthening of those agencies within African states which can deliver welfare and basic infrastructure.
The rich world must decide whether to support the African Union’s Nepad programme, which will worsen the resource drain because of its pro-corporate orientation, or instead to give Africa space for societies to build public/people partnerships in order to satisfy unmet basic needs.
Therefore, as the nation is engrossed in celebrating the milestone stride of re-engaging the international community it is also essential for some introspection to be engaged in defining the parameters of Africa’s willingness to renew its synergies of engagement with the West.
In so doing, Zimbabwe must have a well-grounded ideological standing — one which is cognisant of the permanence of interests. While Europe has set that precedence of dominance it must be noted that this is the case across the board where political-economy interests are concerned. This follows the West’s clear position on its market and democracy relational terms on neo-liberalism. Put simply, neo-liberalism is a cross-cutting rationale which is emphatic on the value of free market competition. Neo-liberalism privileges economic laissez-faire and the freedom (or liberty) of individuals against the excessive power of government. This position champions respect to private property entitlement.
