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Oliver Kazunga

Senior Business Reporter

THE Africa Leather and Leather Products Institute (ALLPI) is forging ahead with capacitating Small-to Medium Enterprises in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and the rest of the continent to foster industrialisation across the leather sector value chain.

In 2015, the SADC Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap was launched with the bloc aiming to ride on the plan for member states to transform their economies, accelerate economic growth, and create employment while also tapping into markets presented by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Zimbabwe, which is one of the 16 SADC members and also a member of the 21-nation Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), is seized with revitalising the leather sector.

At its prime in the 1990s, Zimbabwe’s leather sector was thriving, producing up to eight million pairs of shoes, but most established manufacturing companies later folded citing operational constraints.

However, through interventions such as the Zimbabwe Leather Sector Strategy 2021-2030 to anchor increased investment and maximising value addition and beneficiation to promote export-led industrialisation, the local leather sector is on a rebound.

In an interview on the sidelines of the SADC Industrialisation Week, ALLPI executive director Mr Nicholas Mudungwe said his organisation, a specialised unit of Comesa, was established to support the development of the leather value chains across markets in Africa.

And through ALLPI, Comesa with development partners support, has been rolling out a regional leather industry capacity building initiatives guided by its 2016-2025 Strategic Plan.

Consequently, Mr Mudungwe said ALLPI had managed to support SMEs to respond and address critical skills and marketing gaps, in particular, training them on designing products of high quality.

“We facilitate acquisition of equipment and we have trained them to work as clusters so that they can buy raw materials in bulk at a lower price.

“We are also working towards establishing what we call a marketing house or a trading house, which will then assist SMEs to aggregate their products and supply retail shops — for example, Edgars, Truworths — in bulk because as individuals they cannot do it.

“We look at it from a cluster perspective where we facilitate joint action in terms of using common facilities.

“For example, in Zimbabwe there is equipment at Gazaland (Home Industry in Highfield, Harare) which the SMEs are using, and before they didn’t have, the machinery,” said Mr Mudungwe.

As part of the broader scope to unlock the potential of SMEs, ALLPI assisted Zimbabwe with the establishment of the Bulawayo Leather Cluster Factory in 2018 while the country in 2021 received US$15 million funding from Comesa to capacitate industrial operations under the leather sector value chain.

Prior to the setting up of the leather cluster factories in Harare and Bulawayo, Mr Mudungwe said some of the SMEs were using rudimentary equipment and machines for clothing to produce leather products.

“We are also working with the Zimbabwe Leather Development Council and Leather Institute Zimbabwe to set up a design studio that will assist SMEs to design and come up with novel top-notch products.

“We have done similar activities in more than 13 African countries and beyond that we also support policies and we have designed strategies for developing the leather value chain.

“Our focus is not only SMEs but to support the entire value chain. For instance, at the moment we are working on a traceability system to understand the source of the animal, the skin until it reaches the market,” he said.

“We also facilitate market connection where we support SMEs to participate in trade fairs and forums like these (SADC Industrialisation Week) and as ALLPI, we have also offered our services to SADC in order to identifying suitable value chains to support because we have developed a cost and methodology that we have offered a one week course to SADC.

“We are also working with the entire value chain to improve issues of sustainability. You know climate change is there — so we are trying to say how can we optimise the use of water and chemicals so that we don’t damage the environment.”

ALLPI was established in 1990 and rebranded in 2017 to enable it to support activities towards strengthening the leather value chain across the continent in a seamless and cost-effective manner.

In a separate interview on the sidelines of the SIW, Zimbabwe’s national representative for clusters and SMEs Mr Fungai Zvinondiramba said they started working with ALLPI in 2011 and the adoption and implementation of the clustering concept has seen SMEs in the leather industry enjoying economies of scale.

“The clustering concept works like this, if the SMEs access the same equipment from the same factory to do their different products, the deliveries are that we are going to have quality products and healthy competition as well as cross-pollinating ideas and training made easy.

“If a Government wants to make any interventions, it’s easier to find the SMEs in one place. These are the deliverables for the cluster concept that we are using in the leather sector,” he said.

Mr Zvinondiramba said since their collaboration with ALLPI, SMEs under the leather cluster have received a series of capacity building programmes aimed at promoting growth and development of the enterprises.

“As a national representative, I have also been trained together with my counterparts from 10 member states in terms of design, management and implementation of clusters under the ALLPI banner.

“Our business has significantly improved in the sense that the SMEs that have been doing two pairs per week, are now able to even generate a very big order that can run into thousands because there is equipment for them to use.

“There is also the help of other SMEs who have better skills than them to work with them and improve quality,” he said.