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Vandudzayi Zirebwa Buy Zimbabwe
Recently there was a compelling programme on one of the radio stations on entrepreneurship. An analyst who was one of the guests on the programme said Zimbabweans should be encouraged to aim to be at the top instead of settling for second best. He said success requires innovation and determination more than money. He gave an example of Facebook founder Michael Zuckerberg, who has transformed from a curious University Student inventor to a leading entrepreneur who now can splash billions of dollars on acquisitions like the US$19 billion takeover of Whatsapp.

To put the acquisition into context the US$19 billion is higher than Zimbabwe’s Gross Domestic Product.
Interestingly, as Facebook was making its multi-billion announcement a young Zimbabwean was named among the top 10 web inventors in the world by Google.

The young man is now in the final stages of a competition that can see him being picked among the best five young entrepreneurs in the world.

He joins several Zimbabweans that are being recognised for their innovations. However, unlike the Zuckerberg most of our local talent is being restricted to innovation and rarely does it transform into big business, which is critical if we are serious about taking Zimbabwe forward. Somehow our abilities die prematurely and enter the realm of the ordinary.

The past few days our media has been featuring the top hundred schools for Grade 7 up to ‘A’ level with results indicating that we have bright students that can become successful future businessmen and women.

The question that has not been asked is: What happens to this talent when it leaves school and how can it be used to generate wealth for our nation?

Some two years back the National Youth Council of Zimbabwe sought to celebrate young entrepreneurs who had excelled in various fields.
For reasons best known to the council the awards were postponed and are still to be held.

This reluctance to celebrate young entrepreneurs and recognise our globally acclaimed achievers suggests that as a country we are still way off in unlocking the full value of our talent and coming together to ensure that it rises to the top.

The founder of South Africa’s little Luxury, an assortment of products that have become a hit globally, says that if a product is invented for a local market then one would not have begun their journey. There is certainly no reason why Zimbabweans cannot begin looking beyond our borders and aspiring to see dominate the world market.

We have already shown our resilience in the face of some of the most difficult economic situations.
In 1997 the investment guru, Jeffry Sachs, suggested then that Zimbabwe’s economy will collapse within six months.

After the six months he was asked why such event had not taken place, he could not fathom any intelligent answer. Seventeen years have passed since them the economy is still ticking.

Over the course of the week the resilience of Zimbabweans was in full demonstration when Group CEO of Dairibord Antony Mandiwanza narrated how his organisation which a few years back was second largest supplier of milk products in Africa has remained operational amidst challenges that only those that have witnessed them can believe. In the mid 1990s Zimbabwe produced in excess of 250 million litres of milk a year. Then there were only two producers, with the then Dairy Marketing Board commanding 90 percent of market share.

Then the company was exporting its products across Africa, with its packages found in places as far afield as Tanzania and in places high up as the Kilimanjaro mountain.

Most mountain climbers who sought to boast their energy levels in their quest to conquer one of the tallest mountains in the world believed that only a packet of Chimombe from Zimbabwe was nutritious enough to provide them with the calories equal to the task.
You can also imagine what the small packets of milk did to boast the local tourism industry.

A number of investors are also said to have first heard of Zimbabwe from their encounter with such products.
They realised somewhere in Africa was a relatively small country which produced products that had taken the continent by storm. Today our milk supply has plummeted to about 50 million litres a year.

That in turn has reduced the competitiveness of the sector and impacted negatively on the profitability of our producers. While the reasons for our economic woes are well documented, we have a collective responsibility in working to ensure that both at firm and national level we get back to the top.

In order to achieve this, the private sector and Government should ensure that the country’s young entrepreneurs and inventors are supported and recognised.

These young entrepreneurs are critical in crafting solutions for our industry which is dying to identify new market opportunities and retool.

In fact it goes without saying that a fresh look into our problems by our young persons could bring in more cost effective options than the expensive ones we are chasing at the moment.

The starting point though is to acknowledge that Zimbabwe has a talented pool of young persons and companies like Google are fishing right in our midst. Let us join hands to support them and ensure that their efforts are spent on building the nation as opposed to building other nations.

This will be one of the topics that will be under discussion at the Buy Zimbabwe Annual Conference slated for this April.

Till next week, let us aim for the top because it is less crowded up there.

Email: [email protected], Cell 00263773751878.