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WHILE there has been a lot of progress since independence, especially in the provision of basic health and education services, the Second Republic’s development agenda is crucial for the attainment of Vision 2030 of an upper-middle income society.

The key to this lies in the range of 10 Presidential programmes in rural development and agriculture that have the dual purpose of both increasing national wealth and, very importantly, making sure that the largest single block of the population moves forward.

Many social and economic problems in Zimbabwe, as in all ex-settler states, with South Africa being a prime example, arise from the inherited inequality and these require serious Government intervention to give serious openings and opportunities to a large number of people who were almost locked into poverty and needed these programmes to break out.

The Second Republic has been pushing economic growth on a number of fronts.

We have seen the national gross domestic product making some large jumps, along with significant growth in exports.

This has been driven by the investor friendly policies and the huge growth in mining, a several-fold jump.

That in turn has seen a continuous positive balance of payments as we earn enough foreign exchange to buy imports, rising tax revenue for infrastructure and for social investment and social services, and tens of thousands of new jobs.

But the second strand is also needed, moving forward on the very broad rural and farming front to ensure that the large majority of the people also win, and through their community, family and individual efforts all added together, also push forward the economic growth although in ways that also spread the new wealth created.

Spreading development and real opportunities to create wealth and value is important if we are to attain Vision 2030 of an upper middle-income economy as that sort of economic expansion requires the uplifting of most of the population, each family contributing.

Harare Metropolitan and some other major urban areas are able to self-generate quite a lot of economic growth, although smaller towns are reliant on mines and farming communities.

The major problems of Harare Metropolitan are unplanned growth in housing and businesses, driven by land barons and corrupt councillors and council officials, intermittent services that are not being maintained let alone expanded and other ills.

But the general urban population is reasonably housed, has access to major services even if these are intermittent, and opportunities to start and grow businesses.

A lot of the solutions centre on regularisation, formalisation, upgrading services, and generally resetting the system so that the gains of the growth can be retained while the problems are diminished.

We can look at what has gone wrong, but we can also see the large number of new houses, even if these need to be regularised, and the large number of new businesses, even if many need to be formalised.

Rural Zimbabwe has seen advances since independence, with health and education among the most spectacular.

A majority of the population live in the rural areas, and the largest group are the smallholder farmers, although these are no longer a majority of the population. The growth of other rural occupations, often in the service sector, and the rural industrialisation drive, is providing a more balanced rural economy.

But the Second Republic, after cleaning up the administration of Government finances with tight control and tight budgeting, and seeing greater inflows of tax money, has marshalled the resources required for serious intervention in rural development and conversion of the promises of land reform to rural prosperity.

With President Mnangagwa, a successful farmer himself, taking the policy lead, the State intervention, largely through the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, is concentrated in 10 Presidential schemes: Presidential Inputs Scheme, Presidential Cotton Scheme, Presidential Blitz Tick Grease, Presidential Rural Horticulture Scheme, Presidential Community Fisheries Scheme, Presidential Rural Poultry Scheme, Presidential Rural Goat Pass-on Scheme, Presidential Solar Scheme, Presidential Borehole Scheme and Presidential Rural Development Scheme.

These are at different stages of development but all are designed to sustainably kick-start the process of raising Zimbabwe’s rural households, and their communities, into a 21st century upper middle income society.

The main stress, from the beginning, has been empowering rural households so they can have far better earnings and sustain a far higher standard of living.

There are a number of positive side effects, starting with national food self-sufficiency and adequate raw materials for the agro-industrial sector, but in a very real sense these are side effects and, since they provide the markets for farmers, necessary ones.

But the real thrust of the programmes is to move the bulk of the rural population into the modern business economy, their business being farming but with increasing percentages processing those farm products and providing services to the farmers.

This also grows the national economy. When you add the output of around 11 million people in 3 million households and then increase that value from each family, you do get a lot of gross national product, made up as the President keeps emphasising, from the extra generated by millions of people individually.

Vision 2030 becomes automatic when everyone is upper middle income, and when the productive adults are in that group.

In this case, there is enough national wealth to make sure that the very young, the very old and the vulnerable are not left behind.

Already the national census has seen some changes, such as the growth of modern housing in rural communities. Technology, like ever more affordable solar power, and the Rural Electrification Authority is now concentrating on these 120kW independent grid starter schemes for village communities, plus the village borehole scheme.

It is not so much each scheme that is important, but the combination, beating back that poverty that proved so difficult to eradicate and making sure all Zimbabweans can move forward together into a far brighter future.