I WRITE from Zimbabwe this week where I have been for more than a week. As always during all my visits in the last two or so years, things are looking up but it would be an exaggeration to say that we have turned the corner and are out of the woods.

There are still way too many of our nationals living below the poverty line and our collective focus in my view ought to be how to create conditions to allow them to leap-frog them to the other side.

Of course a potential 9% national growth rate may look gigantic, but we must never forget this is coming off a very low base from the deep we had sunk to as a nation.

The good news is that common people are doing their best to improve their lot but the bad news is that politicians are being themselves. They have entirely taken their eyes off the ball and the political temperature is slowly rising with the rhetoric.

Zimbabwe currently needs a 15 to 20 year plan to fix things but unfortunately the planning horizon of most politicians is the next election. My prayer is that diamonds and other minerals will not turn out to be another curse but fuel that will provide a baseline for future economic growth.

I was at the tobacco auctions floor and I have not witnessed such chaotic situations for a long time. The small scale farmers have done their side of the deal by going into the fields and producing but apparently we are always surprised by success. Clearly, with the seeds sold and the hectrage planted, the industry was able to predict this year’s crop should be upward of 170 million kgs from last year’s 120 million kgs. Supply chain management ought to have demand that everyone in this value chain including merchants and auction floors should anticipate this level of crop and plan accordingly.

But the queues stretching all the way from Tobacco Sales Floors to Olivine in Dagenham Road indicate this was not done. One market mediation process to ameliorate this situation is just to open up the market to more players and this process of abusing rural farmers will be reduced.

When I am in Harare, I like to go to Mbare to be inspired by the people there because when I look at what they have to go through on a daily basis to keep it together, then all my challenges become petty. There is a young man who used to sell steel bars by the main Cripps Road as it passes by the Magaba siyaso market way back in 2000 whom I bumped into this week. He has now set up a hardware store and has gravitated towards formal businesses in Harare city centre.

He proclaimed to me he has completed two houses in the northern suburbs (kumadale-dale as he called it) and is he was now onto a third one. I was clearly impressed by this example coming from the dusty streets of Mbare which demonstrates that opportunity exploitation is not limited by geographical location or level of development but only sustained practical action.

There is also I group of women I used to ferry fresh produce for at Mbare whether it was fresh maize from Chisumbanje, bananas from Honde, oranges from Mwenezi or watermelons from Beitbridge. I also had the privilege of meeting people from Green Market and Musika weHuku in Mutare. These are people who would not understand the definition of the 4 Ps of marketing if it hit them on the head but are so streetwise to appreciate the operational application of the same concepts.

Most of these people make more in a week what the average civil servant makes in a whole month but are generally looked down upon because they are not packaged in the conventional attire of success.

Allow me to borrow from Joseph Made’s school of estimation and apply it to the retail sector. Old Mutual High Glen Shopping Centre is half empty, even the TM supermarket there has closed shop. The situation is not any better at Old Mutual’s other centres at Westgate or Dangamvura in Mutare. Its either the retail sector has not sufficiently recovered or perhaps Old Mutual has not read the changes in the retail market well.

While I am in Zimbabwe, I have read three profit warnings from ZSE-listed companies indicating groaning in other sectors of the economy. Creating an environment for the development of a multiplicity of medium and long term infrastructure projects will stimulate a lot of downstream activities which should put more people on a sustainable financial footing. Unfortunately the civil service which constitutes the largest employment block is still earning poverty wages and all their earnings cover just the basics.

It is not useful to be so educated to be able to eloquently explain the definition of quantitative easing yet remain at the periphery of existence. Education was never intended to be an end in itself but a means to an end. Most of the people in the diaspora have sufficient educational grounding but this needs to be translated into viable practical financial projects.

Zimbabwe is indeed an opportunity frontier but it is currently not a large consumer market of most goods except the basics. There are already a number of overtrade sectors driven partly by diaspora communities such as transport which is clearly unsustainable. Market size determination and innovation is key before rushing off to launch projects in Zimbabwe.

Sustained action and purpose will make things happen provided the politicians do not murk it up for everyone and continue to be outwardly focused for some messiahs from overseas countries to come and do for us what we ought and must do for ourselves.