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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
A NEW economic era beckons for the Matabeleland region which has entered into numerous agreements with Limpopo province in South Africa for co-operation in several economic clusters.

South Africa’s northern province has five districts with 22 local municipalities and Polokwane is the provincial capital while Phalaborwa is a mining and tourism destination.

Matabeleland region comprises Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South which have seven districts each, and Bulawayo metropolitan province.

Matabeleland region boasts of one of the World’s Seven Natural Wonders and Big Five game in Victoria Falls and Hwange making the district Zimbabwe’s tourism capital. Manufacturing industry and culture in Bulawayo, livestock in both Matabeleland South and North and mining in both provinces.

The two neighbours came up with a Trans Limpopo Spatial Development Initiative which was created through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2001 but got affected by various factors over the years.

The only fruit of the MoU to date had been a twinning arrangement between Bulawayo and Polokwane which saw the two cities having cultural exchange programmes at festivals although the City of Kings is now contemplating rescinding the agreement because of lack of progress.

A delegation from Limpopo province led by acting premier Mr Thabo Mokone was in Victoria Falls on Friday to resuscitate the agreement and three twinning agreements were signed, marking the revitalisation of the marriage between the two regions.

Phalaborwa signed MoUs with Hwange Local Board and Hwange Rural District Council while Beitbridge Municipality signed with its neighbour Musina.

Gwanda was supposed to sign with Makhado.

Victoria Falls City is working on signing an MoU with Phalaborwa to co-operate on tourism.

The initiative is a development corridor that seeks to unlock value through co-ordination stretching from the city of Polokwane to Victoria Falls in Matabeleland North and optimise economic opportunities.

Some of the benefits to accrue from the development initiative are the development of one-stop border posts, rehabilitation of the Victoria Falls-Bulawayo-Beitbridge-Musina Road, implementation of Special Economic

Zones and twinning arrangements for local authorities and development agencies.

Areas of cooperation under the initiative are in agriculture, local government, manufacturing, socio-cultural, tourism, sport, infrastructure, mining, trade and investment, and small and medium enterprises.

Bulawayo Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Judith Ncube and Limpopo Premier are co-chairs of the TLSDI initiative.

Welcoming the guests, Matabeleland North Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Richard Moyo said the initiative will go a long way towards enhancing the country’s opportunities towards achieving Vision 2030.

“This is a development corridor that aims to unlock inherent economic potential in the two countries. With such a wide range of benefits that will accrue to our two countries, the burden falls on us to meaningfully engage and deliberate so that we change the livelihoods of our people positively.

“For Zimbabwe, this will go a long way towards achieving our national vision 2030,” he said.

The initiative dovetails Government’s development agenda through the policy of decentralisation and devolution, giving local authorities and local governments autonomy of spearheading economic development through various initiatives and twinning with fellow councils is one of them.

Minister Ncube said it was Matabeleland region’s moment to take its place in the development agenda by adopting new approaches.

“Let’s close ranks and work as a team towards the betterment of our countries. Our communities should benefit from these initiatives which should liberate us to empower ourselves.
“These are job creation opportunities, let’s walk towards achieving that and trade among ourselves. If properly implemented this will feed into National Development Strategy 1,” she said.

Mr Mokone said the African Union has challenged member states to improve trade and cooperation among themselves hence the revival of the MoU.

The two regions have great potential judging by endowments and Beitbridge being the gateway into Southern Africa.

“We are excited that at long last what was agreed upon is being put into action making sure that we create jobs, making sure our people are sharing cultural activities. This is the time for Victoria Falls and Beitbridge Special Economic Zones to cooperate with the Makhado Musina SEZ and enhance trade.

“We are collaborating on matters of local government, tourism, education and other economic and agricultural issues and today we are happy because we have a programme of action and a working group which is meeting monthly just to make sure the dream of our children is actualised, we cannot defer the future of our children,” said Mr Mokone.

He said both Zimbabweans and South Africans have pledged to implement the African Continental Free Trade.

Chief Mvuthu of Victoria Falls also attended the one-day meeting. — @ncubeleon