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Mukudzei Chingwere in CAIRO, Egypt

Zimbabwe and Egypt are stepping up economic cooperation for mutual benefit, with a meeting between Vice President and Minister of Health and Child Care Dr Constantino Chiwenga and Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly here yesterday laying the foundation.

VP Chiwenga is in Cairo for this year’s Africa Health ExCon, which was officially opened by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, amid calls from stakeholders for Africa to close ranks in the quest to build resilient and sustainable health services.

While attending ExCon, which brings together leading manufacturers of medical consumables and pharmaceuticals, specialists and governments representatives, VP Chiwenga has economic diplomacy functions in his itinerary.

The economic diplomacy is informed by and seeks to promote President Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is open for Business” strategy through which authorities are angling to grow the economy through fostering private sector investment and participation.

Egypt, which has done very well in rural electrification and is also one of the best performing aquaculture countries in the world has shown interest in doing business in Zimbabwe.

The Egyptian interest confirms the continued comfort that capital continues to enjoy in Zimbabwe as a safe investment destination and has potential to go a long way in Government’s rural industrialisation plan as a means towards an empowered upper-middle income economy envisioned by the President.

Aquaculture, in which Egypt is one of the world’s best 10 producing countries and for which Zimbabwe is looking forward for exponential growth as part of its strategy towards a US$8,2 billion agriculture industry, also formed part of the discussion between VP Chiwenga and Prime Minister Madbouly.

VP Chiwenga said they had discussed on modalities to impress upon their technocrats to speed up operationalisation of the cooperation.

“You are aware last June I was here for the first edition of this conference,” he said. 

“So, today we were following up on the areas we discussed last year and then the follow-up which were done by our technical staffs on all the areas of cooperation between Zimbabwe and Egypt, with emphasis on the health sector.

“We also touched on areas of interest, looking specifically at areas of cooperation on agriculture, in manufacturing and the health sector which I talked about, so we touched on those areas in detail on what needs to be done.

“Egypt is very interested in us cooperating in the area of agriculture. You are all aware that now the main threat facing the world is food security and food nutrition. So, we shall be seeing a lot of cooperation in that area, the production of cereal and also fisheries.

“We then also touched on the area of energy and they are quite experienced in rural electrification.” 

VP Chiwenga, who is accompanied by his wife Colonel Miniyothabo Chiwenga, and senior Government officials emphasised that his wish and that of his hosts was to see technical staff picking up these discussions and taking them to fruition.

Earlier on, while opening the Excon, President el-Sisi said Egypt was prepared to play its part in the development of health services in his country and Africa as a whole so that the continent can be better prepared to deal with future pandemics.

Africa Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention Director-General Dr Jean Kaseya said it was imperative for Africa to start building capacity towards medical and pharmaceutical self-sufficiency so that the continent was not found wanting in the case of a pandemic as was the case with Covid-19.