The Sunday Mail
Emmanuel Kafe
Zimbabwe will benefit high technological surveying and geo-information skills and equipment from China following successful negotiations in Harare where partnership commitments were made.
The country, which sits on a plethora of minerals, is falling to get optimum benefits from its resources as a result of scarce geological data.
Zimbabwe relies on information from a geological survey conducted by the colonial British government in the 1950s, amidst reports that some of the documentation was stolen at Independence in 1980.
This has allowed mining companies looting the country’s resources on the pretext of exploration.
This has prompted President Mugabe to question why the companies are still exploring if they are not getting anything.
President of the Survey Institute of Zimbabwe, Dr Charles Paradzayi, recently said the Chinese partnership would improve performance of the resources extraction sector.
“High-tech surveying and mapping in the global village is very vital for development of a country,” added Dr Paradzayi.
President of the Chinese National Administration of Surveying and Geo-information and head of delegation Mr Song Chaozhi said there were several areas of potential co-operation to be explored with Zimbabwe.
“There is possible co-operation in areas of staff training through bilateral relations, emerging technology in surveying and mapping, cooperation with the private sector to share hardware and software on mapping and surveying and lastly possible donations in the future.”
The Chinese donated surveying and mapping equipment to the Survey Institute of Zimbabwe, amongst them a ZY3-Satellite and other hardware, and surveying mapping software.
The satellite can be used to update 1:50 000 topographic maps.
Surveying encompasses land surveys, engineering and topographic surveying as well as spatial information management, and remote sensing and geographical information science.
