| The best Zimbabwe news site on the world wide web |  |
| NEWS |
| FORUMS |
| NEWS ANALYSIS |
| READERS' FORUM |
Non resident Zimbabweans part of the solution, too!
By
Tendai
Padenga
THE Zimbabwe
government needs to wake up to realise the inherent power that lies
within the Non Resident Zimbabweans (those in the Diaspora) and set
up a powerful roadmap for engaging them into business in Zimbabwe for
the economic growth and development of the country.
The Ministries of Industry and Finance should set ground breaking rules and conditions that make it more comfortable for the non-resident Zimbabweans to engage in value addition business in Zimbabwe as the government cannot in any way do it on its own, at all.
Here I am referring to special tax concessions and security for the non-resident Zimbabweans' investment as much as industrial land acquisition facilities to be set in place, instead of the government merely encouraging the non-resident Zimbabweans to just send money to their relatives.
On the other hand, the non-resident Zimbabwean communities also need to realise that they hold the key to the scientific and industrial revolution for the economic development of Zimbabwe. They should start maximising on global intellect by simply identifying small ideas with great potential for the scientific and industrial revolutionirisation of Zimbabwe.
Why I am persuaded to believe so, is mainly because the Indian Scientific and Industrial revolution was achieved through, to some extent, the Non Resident Indians (NRI). Soon after India’s independence the then Indian Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, realised that the Indian Scientific and Industrial development revolution could not in anyway be achieved in its totality without the inclusion of NRI.
Consequently, a more economic friendly industrial policy was put in place in favour of the NRI and they were constantly involved and encouraged to participate at all levels in the same, and a more clearer and road worthy policy was finally arrived at and the Indian vehicle for Scientific and industrial Revolution took off slowly. To date, these Policies are still in place and witnessing the Global recognition of India as a global technology giant. By the early 80's people like Dhirubhai Ambani, the Tatas, Mahindra and Mahindra, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji (these are now USD Billion dollar companies) had already put the proper focus of the Indian scientific and industrial revolution in place, and the road ahead was now clear.
When the late Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, came into power he managed by the late 80's to improve and add much value to the initial road map and the government had also realised it could also benefit from the same and was also setting up subsidiaries (which were autonomous and had the full power to appoint their own Chairman, board of directors and CEO based on internationally acceptable management competencies) hence BSNL with subsidiaries like MTNL began to take more defined shapes. When Prof. Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister in Narasimha Rao's government of the 90's, he introduced the most recognised Indian landmark economic reforms which liberalised the economy and opened more doors for NRI by increasing the tax free bands for a formative period thus allowing NRI to grow their companies by involving or sourcing funds from their colleagues abroad. A new breed of NRI entrepreneurs was born, marking the entry of NRI in the airline industry (the likes of Subrata Roy’s Air Sahara). Today the NRI plays a powerful part in the Indian economy and is acknowledged by the government of India. Most of these NRI ventured into technology partnerships with either workmates, neighbours, friends or still other NRI and came back to India in splendour and glory, yet they had left in shackles and chains of frustration.
Should we then become Indians, you might want to ask? No, not in a million years, what I am simply highlighting is NRZ holds the much needed key to the scientific and industrial revolution of Zimbabwe. How? The governement cannot initiate this, given our current situation which is totally different from the Indian one, the NRZ needs to come up and draft a document requesting the governement to consider them and above all acknowledge that, yes, they are part of the solution to the economic revival. The NRZ, thus, needs to be more organized and adopt a systematic approach to these issues and highlight exactly how they want to be incorporated into the economic revival strategy.
After that, an NRZ delegation should be dispatched to go and meet with the respective Ministries (Higher Education and Technology, Science and Technology, Industry and Commerce, Manpower, Finance etc) and discuss in great depth the logistics they need covered and clarify with great detail to some amendments to the Zimbabwe Companies Act and the waiver of unnecessary bureaucratic communication protocol and serious waiver of duty on all industrial equipment and inputs not locally available, earmarked for NRZ Industrial Parks. Once it has been agreed and the NRZ community is satisfied with the documents and or contracts, then technology transfer partnerships can be initiated with the government playing a central role and the NRZ professional task force participating at all levels.
Which areas should the NRZ engage themselves in, then? I would want to highlight just a few cases amongst a wider spectrum of others. There are a lot of Zimbabwean pharmacists and those in the area of bioinformatics the world over. If they make a call to start up a contract bulk drug manufacturing company in Zimbabwe and convince their workmates and neighbours that this is what they have come up with and clearly register the company and go into technology transfer with countries like India to manufacture the bulk drugs in Zimbabwe on contract basis, under established conditions with the parent holding companies, we surely will create more jobs for our friends back home and most importantly bring down the prices of bulk drugs like the TB drugs, anti retroviral drugs etc. This way, we can as well start manufacturing for our neighbours and exporting to regional countries, without such capabilities, and who knows if we meet the international cost and competence requirements, we might even start participating in global contracts for bulk drug manufacturing and earn the much needed forex.
Also to consider is the software industry, which I feel does not require much capital provided the government works very hard on waivering the duty and taxes on computer components as a sure way to not only increasing PC penetration, but also encourage NRZ or local business community wishing to engage in software development and call centers to do so without any unnecessary obstacles.
The information security and business continuity is a significant emerging global business opportunity, one that I feel Zimbabwe needs to address properly. I would like to give credit to Afrosoft (http://www.afrosoft.co.zw) for their biometric application security product, which shows how possible it is to develop world class security oriented software in Zimbabwe, all we need is to be more focused and attack with great might and to do this, we desperately need the government and NRZ to participate sincerely.
Which areas then should Zimbabwe participate in with respect to tapping this hot segment? Zimbabwean companies, with the much needed participation of NRZ and government of Zimbabwe, can participate in the information security market by offering products for the following segments:
1. Authentication: there is a great need for Industry standard authentication solutions to protect the mission-critical data assets for companies and help them harness the power of e-business.
2. Web access management: Web access management solutions enable companies to improve relationships, generate revenue and reduce costs by providing secure access to Web-based applications and services. Zimbabwean companies can look at providing software that protects access to mission-critical Web applications and resources on intranets, extranets and portals. Solutions that provide a central point of management and enforcement while enhancing end user experience through single sign-on functionality for Web applications that are required by global customers today.
3. Developer solutions: e-security tool kits that help lower the cost of software development, shorten time-to-market for new products and increase revenue with new market opportunities, also represent a major opportunity for Zimbabwean Software Companies. Using these, customers can quickly and cost effectively build state-of-the-art encryption and digital signing technology into business applications and Web services, including browsers, wireless devices, e-commerce servers, e-mail systems and VPN products
These are just a few of the many possible areas NRZ can engage to kick-start the economic recovery and creation of employment in Zimbabwe. I should point out, there is nothing extra-ordinary about Indians, it’s just that they are highly organised and have the much needed desire to see India become a global giant and bring back the World Trade Center again to ‘Patna’. If we agree totally, that this is what we want our children to inherit, a global culture of business excellence, locally, then they will surely inherit that.
“All that I have written is not the solution in its own, look in the mirror, Yes, there is the solution” the late Stanley Tookie Williams
Tendai Padenga
is a Zimbabwean studying for Master of Computer Applications with electives
in Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks at Jamia Millia Islamia
University in New Delhi. He can be contacted at: tepadenga@yahoo.co.uk
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS
ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
debate@newzimbabwe.com
All material copyright newzimbabwe.com
Material may be published or reproduced in any form with appropriate credit to this website