The Sunday Mail
Entrepreneurship Matters
Dr Kudzanai Vere
In his 2022 National Budget Statement, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development Professor Mthuli Ncube, presented on a commendable domestic GDP growth of 7,8 percent and a projected 2022 economic growth of 5,5 percent.
According to the National Budget Statement, this was due to the high output in the mining, agriculture, construction, accommodation and food services.
Though these are positive signs of growth, Zimbabwe still has an appalling situation as depicted in the same budget statement where we have merchandise exports in 2021 increasing by 19,2 percent whose increase is mainly from mining and agriculture while our merchandise imports on the other hand increased by 27,3 percent.
On the mining and agriculture side we are predominantly exporting unbeneficiated minerals and raw produce. With a society high in entrepreneurship skills, we could value add our farm produces and export finished goods.
Mining and agriculture are the main pillars that support the economy, but without a strong manufacturing sector, the growth will not be sustainable. The country needs a strong social economic transformation agenda.
We comment Government’s efforts on that regard by coming up with a strategic and comprehensive National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1).
The document is just calling for an entrepreneurship revolution to drive the economy forward.
Without concerted effort to revolutionise the economy through a deliberate alliance of public and private forces, the 5,5 percent envisaged economic growth will remain a dream.
Among the objectives of NDS1 is promoting new enterprise development, employment and job creation and one of the broad-based national priorities is economic growth and stability.
Such priorities are indeed pillars that will build our economy up and poised for growth. Our major challenge remains on the implementation side.
There are visible efforts from the Government in driving this agenda, but it calls for collected effort and buy in from the private sector. We need to undoubtedly capacitate our people with transformational entrepreneurship skills and unlock the value laden in our natural endowments.
Entrepreneurship eradicates poverty and hunger. Of the 17 sustainable development goals by the United Nations towards the vision 2030 of decent lives for all on a healthy planet, the first and second are no poverty and zero hunger and we are only eight years from that target.
Coming back to our own vision, “Towards a prosperous and empowered upper middle-income society by 2030,” one of the priorities are improving the livelihood of the ordinary citizenly and it augurs well with the United Nation goals 1 & 2 but the biggest question remains on the how part.
Most developed countries are on that edge simply because they capacitated their masses with entrepreneurship skills.
Once we have people who know how to do what they do, we will collectively eradicate poverty and hunger. The living standards of our people will be improved and enhanced.
We complain of high poverty levels because we have people who know what they should do, but the majority do not know how it must be done.
Talk of farming, manufacturing, mining you name it. We have people doing things in all these sectors and this is a very good starting point. What’s lacking is the entrepreneurship skills, systems and structures to support such effort.
Look at those who are called vendors, they have the will power and energy to put the economy back on its wheels, the makorokozas and the gwejas in the language popularly used, let’s pick them up as a country from where they are by deliberately filling in the skills gap towards a poverty and hunger free country.
Entrepreneurship leads to socio economic transformation
According to the African Centre for Economic Transformation — ACET, the steady African economic growth must be leveraged by sustainable development policies and plans.
It’s not enough for African economies to just grow, they must transform. Real transformation comes from working right from the fundamentals, going back to business basics and make sure that everyone understands this.
ACET advocates for growth with DEPTH. This is a powerful strategy to the socio economic transformation of Africa and Zimbabwe in particular.
Once we capacitate our people with entrepreneurship skills, they will indeed development and grow the economy with DEPTH.
DEPTH is actually an acronym for Diversification, Export Competitiveness, Productivity increase, Technology and Improved human well-being.
Diversification comes from availability of knowledge and skills to innovatively produce the goods and services for our markets.
Entrepreneurship skills are key enablers of the DEPTH as ascribed by Africa Centre for Economic Transformation. Once production increases, we would have excess of products to export to other countries and get foreign currency.
In doing all this, we need to ride on the technology wave. Technology has made a number of processes easier and simpler.
The ultimate aim for this social economic transformation is to have better living standards for our people as a country.
An all-inclusive entrepreneurship approach
the way forward
An appreciation of entrepreneurship skills is fundamental in any business endeavour though we really understand and know that not everyone can be an entrepreneur.
Those that are showing interest in some business must be mentored and coached in entrepreneurship that if you fail to become renowned entrepreneurs along the way, you become the best at the preceding level.
Entrepreneurship must be taught in every sector of the economy, mining, agriculture, tourism, industry you name it.
In every sector there are critical economic activities taking place which calls for entrepreneurship minds to innovate and add value.
Look at the mining sector for example, the whole country was and is still exporting raw diamonds, gold and platinum.
We must capacity our people to have eyes that sees opportunities to further process these into finished goods. We will obviously spend five times the cost of our exports importing finished and polished products from outside. Which means we have to toil extra hard to buy that which is made out of the raw material we exported.
Let’s expedite the issues to do with polishing and processing our own diamonds and precious metals. This calls for action oriented innovative thinkers.
Our agriculture industry suffers from the same ailment.
We even import tomato sauce from South Africa, a tomato product and yet we have vast land to grow tomatoes.
Our local manufacturers are not producing enough for our local market but if we have more players in that sector, we will even have excess for export market.
Conclusion
The country has a willing and passionate population that needs concerted effort from both private players and Government in the direction of entrepreneurship skills.
Entrepreneurship is cross cutting in nature and such skills are missing or deficient in many. Let’s collectively support our fellow kinsmen
Determined to engage, inspire and transform generations in the areas of entrepreneurship and personal development.
The writer, Dr Kudzanai Vere is an entrepreneur, author of four books, business and personal development, multiple award winning entrepreneurship and business coach. Dr. Vere has coached more than 5000 entrepreneurs globally and continues to impact people in the areas of entrepreneurship, business and personal development. He is the founder & CEO of Kudfort, Transformational Mindset Institute and the Institute of Entrepreneurs Zimbabwe. Contact Dr Kudzanai Vere for transformational entrepreneurship and business coaching and training on [email protected] or +263 719 592232
