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Fungi Kwaramba Political Editor

AFRICANS should listen to the wise wisdom of President Mnangagwa who has emphasised economic development that leaves no one and no place behind, visiting former Malawian President Joice Banda said.

Last night, Mrs Banda paid a courtesy call on President Mnangagwa at State House where she apprised him on community programmes that she has been carrying out in her home country, which led her to visit Zimbabwe.

Mrs Banda said despite having served as a government minister in her homeland, including being president, community development has always been her driving passion.

In Zimbabwe, she was in Matabeland North province where she presided over the  groundbreaking ceremony for a community project targeting hundreds of villagers in Hwange’s Msuna area along the Zambezi River.

The Southern African Development Initiators (Sadi) invited her so that Zimbabwe can learn from Malawian humanitarian projects she is involved in for communities, targeting women, girls and the less-privileged.

In an interview, after meeting President Mnangagwa, Mrs Banda said

“I am supporting my President (Lazarus Chakwera) through community development programmes and that is what brought me to Zimbabwe because Sadi wants to replicate the smart villages we are building in Malawi.

“Before I left Malawi I had to take leave of my president and equally here I couldn’t leave without paying a courtesy call on my other President, because we are one people.

“There was a time in our past when we were considered a federation, so the best we can do is to listen to what President Mnangagwa and President Chakwera have said that we need to do political diplomacy yes, but we need to focus more on economic diplomacy.

“We need to ensure that our people’s lives are transformed, we need to be each other’s keeper because no one else is going to come and transform our countries. My opinion is that no country can do that on its own, it’s our responsibility to find ways of supporting our governments,” she said.

Mrs Banda yesterday travelled from Bulawayo to Harare by road and was awed by the beauty of the country where roads are being constructed as part of President Mnangagwa’s broad industrialisation and modernisation of the country to become an upper middle class economy by 2030.

“There is so much history we share as two nations that we have to take forward,” she said.

Mrs Banda also said rural transformation was a noble cause, especially considering that a majority of rural girls struggle to access basic needs like health and education.

The former Malawian leader recently attended the inter-generational conference in Malawi for young and elderly women which sought to find solutions to humanitarian problems.