By Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu 

NATIONAL economic development is currently Zimbabwe’s top drawer priority, with devolution as the country’s major policy thrust. 

To achieve optimum results on the basis of devolution, it is important to take economic development to the lowest national administration level. 

Devolution is primarily a way of empowering a community or a nation at its lowest strata which, in Zimbabwe’s case, are the municipality council wards. 

The country’s population is estimated at 15 million with 80 percent (12 million) of these living in the rural areas. 

It is in these areas that a fairly large part of economic activity should take place. 

Rural environment leadership comprises councillors, village heads, headmen, chiefs, House of Assembly members and politicians as delegated or appointed at the level involved. 

Every ward has its own economic strengths in the form of resources that can be identified, a process that should cover all the districts for them to show their economic potential. 

Some wards have either actual or potential economic strengths. 

Actual strengths may include water sources or bodies, wooded localities, minerals, productive agricultural soils, soils suitable for pottery as well as cultural, natural or historical tourist attractions.

Parts of Zimbabwe have natural health resorts, some of which can be developed and used to promote medical tourism on the same pattern as Kalo Vivary (formerly Karlsbad) in the Czech Republic in central Europe.

Potential economic resources include surface water reservoirs which can be developed into perennial fisheries, particularly for trout. 

Economic resources are synonymous with economic strengths.

Several wards in Manicaland, Matabeleland North and parts of Matabeleland South provinces can be turned into suppliers of timber and furniture. 

They themselves can use their local wood to supply the nation with its furniture requirements from cradles to coffins. 

Factories for such things should be established in the rural areas where the raw materials used are easily found. 

What would have to be transported to urban centres where there are relatively higher market opportunities would be finished products. 

It is important to lay much emphasis on furniture manufacturing because it is a sector in which investors usually turn wild resources (trees) on which they have not spent any money into marketable products. 

In many cases, timber procurement initially involves  the cutting down of targeted trees, something that needs more raw physical power than financial capital. 

We can reasonably assume that, in rural areas, there are more human than financial resources. 

Rural markets for timber and its products include schools, hospitals as well as construction for both domestic and business purposes. 

Ward leadership’s major responsibilities should not be imported from outside the country but rather, districts should export food to one another. 

It is utterly irresponsible for political leadership to repeatedly talk about sponsorship by the US as the MDC Alliance does. 

All we require to be more or less self-sufficient in terms of our food needs are our own hands, eyes, legs and motivation at ward level.  

Each ward should endeavor to have the highest per capita income in Zimbabwe, something that can be achieved on the basis of devolution. 

Motivation is the key to hard work while effective political and cultural leadership is the means by which to achieve motivation.

Some wards have an advantage, or advantages, over others in that they have more resources such as minerals and relatively better developed communication and transport infrastructure than others. 

However, virtually all such wards have to import food, beverages, clothing and building material from outside their borders to meet the needs of their respective communities that increase daily. 

Examples are the Chiadzwa Diamond Fields and the Hwange Colliery. 

These semi-urban centres can, and should, rely on neighbouring rural areas for their meat, milk, vegetables and construction requirements instead of importing them from South Africa or elsewhere. 

A matter that should be clarified in connection with Zimbabwe’s economic development is an ideological one; a natural choice made by the people themselves to the exclusion of the elected national leadership (government) or by social and psychological pressure of the elite. 

We are referring to private enterprise as compared to socialism about which both ZANU PF and PF ZAPU said a great deal during the armed liberation struggle. 

We said we would adopt socialism in a free and independent Zimbabwe, by which we meant an economic and political theory and practice of social organisation that holds that the community, as a whole, should own and control the means of production, of distribution and of exchange. 

But that was not to be as we faced immeasurably strong geo-political and historic-cultural factors that necessitated the continuation of the status quo ante independence excepting land ownership. 

Economic development on the basis of devolution as spelt out by the national Constitution’s Chapter 14 is thus guided by free enterprise and not socialistic principles and practices. 

Ward-communities should look within themselves for industrial undertakers and commercial entrepreneurs if devolution is to have the expected economic effects. 

However, where such an ideal situation is impossible for whatever reason, outside investors should be required to employ a fairly high percentage of local labour to give the ward’s economic projects a local human character. 

Some Zimbabweans in the Diaspora have made it financially and are looking for investment opportunities as well as suitable retirement environments. 

Zimbabwe’s rural areas offer an incomparably pleasant environment for those who wish to invest a part of their pension in viable businesses such as goats projects, tourist attractions, fisheries, fruit-canning, milk production and processing enterprises. 

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s historic statement: “Zimbabwe is open for business,” is directed to both indigenous and foreign investors, and those Zimbabweans in the Diaspora should take a leaf out of the experience of the Jews who created Israeli’s economy by their regular remittances as well as their investments. 

East, West, home is the best for investment as well as for burial! 

Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 

0734 328 136 or through email. sgwakuba@gmail.com