HISTORICALLY,when some journeyed into business in Zimbabwe, it usually was through the ‘me too’ route. If someone set up a bottle store at a Growth Point, before long there would be five other bottle stores chasing after the same village drinker and highway traveller to the point that the competition became toxic instead of being healthy.

We witnessed it in the 1980s when Peugeot 404 and 504 were allowed to carry people in the difficult transport years. A few of the first people made a bit of money, but before long everyone with a ramshackle was packing people in the boot like sardines. As the margins declined, the ramshackle became a death trap as no-one could afford to service it any more.

A recent wave of “me-too” mass hysteria has been the proliferation kombis fueled mainly by Diaspora-based Zimbabweans. Now we have professional Zimbabweans trying to crowd out high school drop –outs as new kombi owners. Some have been told the lie that you make profit of US$60-US$120 a day with a small kombi by people who do to even understand the difference between turnover and profit.

There is no proper apportionment of costs for tyres and general vehicle wear and tear, insurance, service and staff costs. People travel for a reason, not just to assist the cash flow of kombi owners. Judging by the number of touts all over Zimbabwe, competition has also become toxic. We have gone to the extent of importing metallic problems on wheels as some of the acquisitions have less than a year of useful life time left.

Those with a bit more money have escalated imports to the so called “Gonyeti” after hearing dinner time stories about someone making money in freight transport. We piled into them and we went slightly ahead of ourselves.

Freight is a direct function of the ability of the economy to produce goods. At one point, the majority of the freight was food aid. With our brightest having deserted declining industries to join the donor and NGO community, deciding who gets the tender to move donated maize and cooking oil from point A to point B became the new industry.

The other wave of “me-too” business fueled again by the Diaspora community that almost reached a crescendo in 2009, was importing used vehicles. Before we knew it, we started to resemble down town Tokyo as every street corner suddenly became a car dealership.  On average, these ramshackle vehicles land on our shores at no less than US$4,500. At one time, the number of vehicles being cleared at Beitbridge was reported to be 400 a day.

I have no problem transferring one environmental disaster from Tokyo to Zimbabwe, but the Zimbabwe Inland Revenue Authority needs to be ashamed of itself for collecting more than $2,000 duty for a car they know will stop working in a year’s time. It is important to note that these transactions are being done without any vehicle finance, so it is direct hard earned money. This is in a country where the majority of the working people earn less than $300 a month. How this market is supposed to sustain these purchases is a mystery.

In India, it is now possible to deliver a new basic car to the market at US$2,200. Would it not be the ultimate innovation to assemble and deliver a vehicle in Zimbabwe for less than $3,000?

To illustrate how we generally misallocate our resources and efforts at one time, Air Zimbabwe flights to Dubai and Beijing were packed with Zimbabwean importing virtually the same product ranges like clothes, shoes and gadgets. Handling this in an innovative way would be to find a way to keep the rest of the passengers being productive elsewhere while a single person facilitates a bulk order to benefit from economies of scale.

Would it not be more productive if our Ministry of Small Enterprises was involved in facilitating genuine real enterprises development instead of just being a conduit of cross border traders masquerading as SMEs?

For our per capita production of educated and skilled personnel, we are not doing very well in producing innovation entrepreneurs. Innovation entrepreneurs are willing to explore ground breaking new business ventures and are pioneers.

Innovation entrepreneurship can result in explosive growth and wealth creation. One just needs to look at young college guys making millions from social networking innovation. Econet has become a billion dollar company in about 10 years because of adapting and diffusing innovation. It has overtaken 50-year-old companies which are still growing “kancane kancane”.