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Fradreck Gorwe Herald Reporter
Some positives continue to pile on the Zimbabwean cause as re-engagement efforts once more find an efficient catalyst at the US-Africa Business Summit in the Mozambican capital of Maputo.

The summit  is expected to discharge sound trickle down effects on the Zimbabwean economy as the country is strategically located on the way of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flow from northern surplus countries among which the US trends.

Convened under the theme  “Advancing a resilient and sustainable US- Africa partnership,” the summit, which ends today brought together over 1 000 US and African private sector executives, international investors, senior government officials and multilateral stakeholders. President Mnangagwa was among African heads of States who attended the summit.

The engagement and re-engagement which President Mnangagwa instigated and is credited for had long been incorporated as one of the main objectives upon which the aspirations of Vision 2030 of a prosperous and empowered upper middle income status society are anchored.

The re-engagement drive co-exists with various initiatives embedded within the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP).

“Re-engagement” is to severed ties as “engagement” is to the creation of overtly new ones.

Speaking to ZTN News, Presidential Spokesperson George Charamba said the summit would provide Zimbabwe with the best platform to ensure the threadbare relationships between Zimbabwe and America, both in political and economic terms, are brought back on track.

“Essentially the US falls under the category of countries that . . . we target for re-engagement. You know the troubling relationship between Zimbabwe and the US has spanned for almost over two decades, so, really if we have a platform like this it is an opportunity for us to then ramp-up our re-engagement efforts at a political level.

“In economic terms, I happen to know that the Americans are bringing in town a whole group of investors who are looking for and scouting for opportunities in the Southern African region, and so there is that element as well, the commercial or the corporate side where Zimbabwe can in fact pitch its own story to drive an FDI from America.”

Re-engagement with the decades-long antagonist is expected to unlock broad avenues of the Zimbabwean economy as US investors are currently envisioning the casting of nets to the Southern African region for business opportunities. Zimbabwe has well known vast investment opportunities.

“Zimbabwe must expect their President to make a case for Zimbabwe as an investment destination by way of the industrialisation prospects, by way of these mineral resources which are vast, by way of tourism and by way of infrastructural projects.

“We happen to know, as we speak, that there is a good prospect that a key American corporate body called General Electric could very well be a core player in the Batoka energy project. We have a lot to do by way of rail infrastructure, road infrastructure, energy infrastructure and many other things to enhance our own interactivity with the rest of the world, more critically to transform ourselves from being a land-locked country to a land-linked country, which is really a function of infrastructure,” said Mr Charamba.

“Interestingly, the route of much of the FDI traces the coastline countries of Africa, which means fundamentally the issue of access and the issue of logistics is critical, the more reason we therefore need to invest in communication to ensure that we become land-linked and not land-locked,” he added.