Some of my colleagues say they subscribe to the theories and principles of economic and financial convergence that they use to explain and shape economic life out there in the world of ordinary people.

Although I am not writing this book for my professional colleagues, I feel I should have a word or two for them here. I am aware that there are two dominant schools of thought that define the approaches to economic and financial convergence; that is, absolute convergence or relative convergence.

Convergence itself refers to the tendency of countries’ macroeconomic indicators to move in the same or one direction over time. In this sense, absolute convergence states that, irrespective of the size of countries, irrespective of the structure of the productive systems of the economies of different countries and irrespective of their initial conditions, at some point in future, the economies of all countries should converge to a certain threshold of macroeconomic stability.

Relative convergence, however, accepts and recognises that countries have different economic and financial drivers and also that initial conditions in different economies have a strong bearing on the time dynamics of growth and development.

As such, relative convergence holds that over time, different economies in a given regional cluster will have their macroeconomic variables such as GDP growth, inflation, employment, exports growth, imports growth, investment and savings growth, among many others, moving towards a general range of convergence without necessarily being exactly equal in absolute terms.

In the practicalities of the real world, relative convergence does have greater application and more realism, as it brings home the imperative that macroeconomic stability needs not be defined and equated to a given set of absolute theoretical numbers that must be applied in a straight jacket manner across different economies.

This is the orientation, relative convergence, that has defined my general approach to issues of macroeconomic stability in Zimbabwe and how I have seen the challenges facing the Zimbabwean economy relative to others in the region and elsewhere.

An instructive example in this regard is the ghost of inflation that has dogged Zimbabwe for some ten years now, and particularly over the past four or so years. As of October 2008, Zimbabwe’s official inflation ranked as the most severe in the world, averaging 231 percent annually.

To the impractical observer who takes the absolute economic and financial convergence approach, the immediate analytical pitfall is to summarily conclude from this shockingly high inflation rate that life in Zimbabwe must necessarily be worst on earth compared to that in all the other countries under the sun.

Yet my own modest professional experience, supported by my practical exposure gained through actual real life interface with the realities on the ground, not only in Zimbabwe but also other countries here in Africa, in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Americas, Central Europe and the Far East, among several other places I have been fortunate to visit, tells a different story.

My conviction and experience is that, while it is clearly a scourge in conventional terms, inflation alone does not reflect the reality of the true quality of life in a given country.

I was in Morocco in September 2008, Ghana and Nigeria earlier this year, Uganda at the end of October and the beginning of November, among other “model” countries with single digit inflation and double digit growth rates. I am convinced that many of my fellow countrymen and women will choose to remain in Zimbabwe, in the hope that a political solution will be found sooner rather than later, as opposed to trading permanent places of residence with some of our erstwhile “model” economies.

For example, a business section of a daily newspaper in Harare had a headline in October 2008 screaming that “Zimbabwe’s inflation soars to 231 million percent” (The Business Herald, 9 October 2008, p31). After I read this story, I quickly went into the global economic database and found that in the United States of America, its inflation for September 2008 was a mere 2.6 % per annum. In the same database, I found out that other countries had the following inflation for September 2008: Germany 3.1%; Brazil, 12.4%; Britain, 5.2%, Iceland, 14%; Indonesia, 12.14%; South Africa, 13.7%; and the Democratic Republic of Congo, 12% (August 2008).

As I sifted through the numbers, I also was struck by some alarming news headlines on the same day affecting the United States and Britain: “The USA Central Bank, the Fed injects at least $700 billion into economy to try and arrest the catastrophic financial and economic meltdown” (CNN, 9 October 2008). “The USA’s debt clock has run out of zeros as America’s public debt soars beyond $10 trillion and the digital machine can’t cope with more zeros” (CNN, 9 October 2008). “The UK Central Bank injects at least $89 billion into the market to support distressed banks” (BBC, 9 October 2008).

Indeed, as I flipped through the pages of financial market intelligence reports, it did not take me much time to see that as of October 2008, the world economy was in the middle of a dramatic and painful recession, marked literally by a catastrophic economic and financial meltdown in the developed world, led by the USA and the European Union.

Yes, as I was taking in this awakening, I began asking myself: “With Zimbabwe’s inflation having scored 231 million percent, and that of the USA standing at a mere 2,6 percent, does it mean in general, the USA citizens are psychologically and materially happier, better off and more economically secure than most Zimbabweans?”

As I was mulling over the practical meaning and ramifications of this question, another headline popped onto my television screen: “Iceland’s largest bank seized by government” (CNN, 9 October 2008). The Icelandic government had nationalised three of its largest banks in the wake of the financial crisis.

With all these headlines flying in my face, I became even more alive to the fact that the world economy was evolving at an extraordinarily fast pace. So fast that reliance on past, antiquated theoretical postulations about free markets and the relevance of economic measures such as inflation would be akin to trying to stand still on a rolling trade mill.

In respect of welfare and quality of life issues, I recall watching with teary eyes in 2005 when for days on end newly born babies, the sick, the elderly, expecting mothers and the injured were stranded on rooftops in chilly weather in the USA when Hurricane Katrina struck the impoverished communities of Louisiana and Mississippi.

The horrific pictures and the depth of the scars to the human spirit which the world watched helplessly as Katrina took its toll, with little or no response from the US government authorities who appeared to be paralysed by the devastation of the hurricane, indeed contrasted sharply with the low single-digit inflation. This was much more so when one looked at the “high level” picture of prosperity the world has come to associate with the USA through the digital convenience of satellite television, print media news and the internet platform.

Elsewhere in Africa, we see daily pictures of virtually starving millions (DRC in October/November 2008) stuck in the jaws of sprawling refugee camps running away from war and civil strife, with nothing to their names by way of material possessions. Again, when you flip the pages of macroeconomic indicators, one finds such countries with “healthy” inflation numbers, well in line with so-called “steady-state comfort zones” of macro-economic stability. Some of them even have positive economic growth in the range of up to 6%.

There must be a major disconnect here which should contextualise Zimbabwe’s inflation story, alarming as it sure is, in conventional terms. In my own personal reflections, which have been robustly strengthened and corroborated by the 2008 global financial turmoil, there is a lot of re-engineering which contemporary economists and financial managers must do to radically remodel the tired and impractical theories of yesteryear.