Ideas about how Zimbabwe can have sustainable socio-economic development

I made an unbiased assessment of the economic landscape in Zimbabwe and came up with my own ideas about what I think is the best way forward for Zimbabwe to achieve sustainable socio-economic development without relying too much on donor funding. Sustainable growth will arrive by way of debt destruction rather than credit creation and we don't get out of the debt dependency trap by creating more debt, we do so by learning to be self reliant. Let us not forget that the underlying problem is that we don't have enough government savings to support sound lending. A balanced economy needs a savings pool commensurate with its debt pool. Any solution that deviates from that equilibrium will lower the standard of living for our children. It took years to deplete our collective fortunes and it will take years of saving, coupled with painful debt destruction, to establish a stable foundation for economic growth.

The Zimbabwe coalition government inherited a collapsed economy that was just starting to show signs of recuperating, thanks to the introduction of the US dollar and the Rand as a form of currency. After many years of corruption, reckless spending as well as conspicuous consumption and mismanaged ineffective policies in the Zanu PF government as well as sanctions the country needs a lot of money for it to be rebuilt. The treasury doesn't have the money needed to fund the rebuilding projects and since most international donors seem to be reluctant to help, the country is left with not much option but to be self-reliant. We as Zimbabweans are at a societal inflection point, one where each of us must be accountable for what each one of us will do to rebuild our nation and how we do it. While many of us weren't responsible for the hole in which we find ourselves, pointing fingers and placing blame will do little to dig us out of it. We, the people of Zimbabwe, must offer a collective "mea culpa" if we hope to regain respectability on a global stage. There aren't any magic pills mind you, but humility, diplomacy and cooperative intelligence are intuitive starting points on the road to redemption.

Zimbabwe is blessed with abudant resources but their value has been squandered not through natural disasters but through human error, greed and corruption. If all those abudant resources that the country has were to be harnessed and utilised towards the development of the country, there is no good reason why Zimbabwe would not be able to be self-reliant and generate wealth. Our greatest opportunity lies in maximising our resources, both human and natural and making sure that they work at both an individual and community level. The success of Zimbabwe in becoming self-reliant depends on the full utilisation of its resources as well as the building of business relationships and partnerships of value that are equitable and sustainable not only locally but also continentally as well as in the global village.

One of Zimbabwe's greatest challenges remains corruption and individualistic attitudes. Investors crave legal certainty and to provide it Zimbabwe needs to crack down on corruption and improve Zimbabwe's justice system. The individualistic attitudes that I am talking about are that sense of selfishness which some call a sense of self-preservation that makes it immpossible to build effective teams that put aside individual interests so as to work together torwards the common goal of the team. Such individualistic attitudes can work against the aim to be a self reliant country. For Zimbabwe to be able to be self-reliant all its stakeholders need to work together harmoniously as a team like bees. Therefore there is need for Zimbabweans to get rid of real or imagined jealous around who develops and who does well, supporting instead those that do well and sharing lessons learnt. As one big Zimbabwean team working towards being self-reliant, let us fight against negative competition and jealousy so that we don't work against each other and instead work together. However the greatest of all challenges that Zimbabwe faces is Mugabe and his Zanu PF party's reluctance to embrace democratic principles. China gets away with practising communism and not being alienated internationally for doing that because it has become a formidable force to reckon with in terms of economic advancement such that powerful countries like the USA depend on borrowing money from it to sustain their American lavish lifestyles. Who would dare bite the hand that feeds the self? Communist practices in Zimbabwe of repressing the opposition through the arms of an unfair police force and an unfair justice system will never be tolerated by the world because Zimbabwe is not as powerful as China is. Mugabe and his Zanu PF party need to realise that to the rest of the world Zimbabwe is just one insignificant drop in a global ocean that needs to comply to a decent political ideology for it to be accepted and helped to grow in the global village. If Mugabe and his Zanu PF party were to allow the full democratisation of Zimbabwe, international donors would definately be very willing to bail out Zimbabwe from its financial woes. Could somebody please hammer the goodness of democracy into the heads of Mugabe and his Zanu PF party so that they appreciate it as a better political ideology to adopt than communism.

Science and technology presents another challenge as this backbone is essential for the development of infrastructure and so needs be a focus area. Universities should play a big role in addressing this challenge just as they should be integral in fostering home-grown industries. Zimbabwe needs more small, medium and micro enterprises(SMMEs) for it to be able to address its development issues and move away from the dependency trap. SMMEs are important for the survival of a self-reliant population and the creation of opportunities for employment and innovation in Zimbabwe. Empirical research demonstrates that well conceived SMMEs have a chance of making significant contributions to the development of countries. Even though their business operations might be small, SMMEs are often the largest employment creators in the economy. Amongst the challenges facing Zimbabwe is job creation and business innovation and if SMMEs are properly conceived, funded and supported, they can make a significant contribution in addressing these two issues. SMMEs can address the development challenges facing Zimbabwe if they are taught effective and efficient ways of running their businesses. That is were academic institutions and universities come in, they should be utilised to develop the skills and knowledge of those individuals who run SMMEs. Universities should be encouraged to develop special programs to support SMMEs. It is imperative that Universities in the country should play a major role in educating effective business methods relevant to the development challenges facing Zimbabwe if SMMEs are to be made relavant to economic growth. In line with that point Universities should study SMMEs and share their research outputs with the SMMEs. The Universities should conduct experiments that lead to the establishments of small enterprises that are successful from a product point of view, so that consumers out there can be encouraged to support SMMEs. The challenges that face SMMEs include the knowledge, skills and information that can lead to them becoming innovative and effective in their daily business. If these issues can be systematically addressed by Universities, it will assist SMMEs to evolve from being small to becoming major contributors to local, continental and global markets. SMMEs have an important role to play in contributing to advancing economic development in Zimbabwe and the onus is on the coalition government to give them all the support that they need to grow. SMMEs are the key to the country growing economically to the extent that it becomes self-reliant.

Zimbabwe's challenges are unique and as such international models can not just be imposed on to the local environment like what the IMF usually insists on doing when they offer an African country some loan. We need to apply international best practices, but look internally for solutions. A definite need exists to nurture indigenous knowledge and then develop it and support it with international constructs. In Zimbabwe there is need to use knowledge to address the nation's development challenges by tapping into what is known and modifying it to provide solutions that fit the unique Zimbabwe situation. Both MDC parties that joined Zanu PF to form a coalition government are devoid of effective ideas and strategies that can address Zimbabwe's developmental challenges with minimum if not zero international donor funding and we would be great fools if we rely on Zanu PF whose government brought us this far in the doldrums. So the answer to our developmental challenges lies in the Zimbabwe coalition government setting up a knowledge management organisation which provides an opportunity to intergrate and manage better what knowledge exists in the country and where lacking, to develop new knowledge. The establishment of a knowledge mobilisation initiative whose aim is to address Zimbabwe's development challenges such as lack of access to basic services, inability to feed its populations and a poor governance record is the answer to the country's problems. This knowledge management organisation will serve as a platform for knowledge dissemination and exchange amongst Zimbabwean stakeholders, including policy makers, researchers, donors, academics, sector professionals in the public and private sector as well as not for profit organisations. This initiative should consist primarily of knowledge networks, research and co-operation in the focus areas of accountability and public participation in governance, water and energy service delivery, technology and indigenous knowledge systems and agricultural food security, land and agrarian reform. Internationally, it is well recognised that corporate society is on the verge of a new horizon in which intellectual capital is rapidly becoming the new currency. In this context, the question of implementing a knowledgement management way of doing things in Zimbabwe becomes one of paramount importance to enable the country to align more closely to global trends. The knowledge management organisation has got to aim to serve as a leading change agent for sustainable socio-economic development in Zimbabwe. Its strategic vision should not only be knowledge management but should also include the creation of smart partnerships, innovation and entreprenuership, black economic empowerment and the broadening and deepening of the development impact in Zimbabwe. It should be able to align strategy, structure, culture and processes for it to be able to achieve a Zimbabwe free of poverty and inequity, a Zimbabwe whose citizens are all mobilised and empowered to cause an economic turnaround based on self-reliance and not on donor funding. Success in the economic development of Zimbabwe largely depends on such a knowledge management organisation being set up by the coalition government, so that principles and tools to increase efficiency and productivity can be formulated and disseminated amongst relevant stakeholders. The fact that the knowledge management organisation has to incorporate academics and development practitioners that have to come up with solutions on the ground will ensure that Zimbabwe mitigates its major weakness of coming up with very intelligent solutions in theory which it then fails to implement. The success of this knowledge management initiative largely depends on how willing the participants are to share their knowledge with each other and how sensitised they are to the role they have to play in getting it out to others in a form that is understandable to all. Those who are reluctant to share knowledge and information should understand that knowledge is different from other consumables that get used up when shared. By sharing knowledge it multiplies, it doesn't diminish, so Zimbabewans need to stop seeing knowledge as their own personal asset that needs to be protected, they need to see the immense benefit of a communal knowledge base, through this knowledge management organisation that I am proposing for the Zimbabwean coalition government to set up. It should be noted that money alone is not going to solve Zimbabwe's problems, the money would need to be spent effectively and knowledge management will provide Zimbabweans with the capacity to absorb and disburse any funding it gets to create sustainable socio-economic growth. Knowledge management will support funding with knowledge.

Lastly I want to point out that while saving is an intuitive individual solution, it's the death knell of an economic ecosystem measured by the sum of its parts and reliant on the velocity of money. So the Zimbabwean coalition government should encourage people to save money while rewarding productivity in the private sector. This includes allowing interest rates to rise to reward savers, drastically reducing government spending, investing tax dollars in education and passing tax cuts that rebuild the socioeconomic system from the inside out. While this approach is a bitter pill to swallow, most medicine is, it is the only sustainable path. Remember, we're at a critical crossroads, one that will leave an indelible impression on world history. It's not often you get a second chance at making a good impression. Given how high the stakes are, the onus is on us to stand together as citizens of Zimbabwe in social partnerships, in a knowledge management organisation , as SMMEs and simply at our different work places to affect that positive change, one step at a time until we get there.