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Sikhulekelani Moyo, [email protected]

INDUSTRY and Commerce Minister Mangaliso Ndlovu has said there is a need to enrich digital space by retooling major facets of the economy to bring about the requisite resilience and to deliver greater efficiencies across all value chains.

He said this during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) E-trade Readiness Assessment of Zimbabwe national stakeholder workshop in Harare yesterday.

The event is a culmination of the engagement with UNCTAD in December 2023, when the Ministry of Industry and Commerce participated in the UNCTAD e-Week in Geneva, Switzerland.

Minister Ndlovu said it was during this international event that they engaged and accepted UNCTAD’s offer to assist Zimbabwe in undertaking an e-trade readiness assessment, aimed at unpacking the country’s e-commerce ecosystem, taking into account the prescribed seven pillars, namely e-commerce assessment; ICT infrastructure and services; payment solutions; trade facilitation and logistics; legal and regulatory frameworks; e-commerce skills development; and access to finance.

“There is a beckoning need to enrich our digital space by retooling major facets of our economy to bring about the requisite agility and resilience and to deliver greater efficiencies across all value chains.

“We are very pleased to note that the UNCTAD e-Commerce and Digital Economy (ECDE) Programme indeed resonates with the aspiration of our National Development Strategy (NDS1),” he said.

“The digital economy has been aptly identified as one of the priority areas of development, ICTs being a key enabler of industrial and economic development.”

Hence, he said the entrenchment of ICT across all national development strategies is critical for the attainment of the country’s Vision 2030, for a prosperous and empowered upper-middle-income society by 2030.

Zimbabwe is making strides towards ensuring that its citizens enjoy the benefits of digital economic transformation.

Apart from enhancing the ease of doing business and cutting operational costs, digitisation should alleviate the transacting challenges associated with manual purchases and the demand for hard cash.

Minister Ndlovu said the adoption and increased usage of ICTs present massive opportunities for extending growth beyond the conventional growth sectors.

“We are therefore looking up to the unfolding e-Trade Readiness Assessment by UNCTAD, to demystify how the country can leverage on the opportunities for sustainable development through widespread usage of ICTs,” he said.

He also emphasised the need to involve micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the adoption of e-commerce, saying that the sector has since become a major contributor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth not only in Zimbabwe or the Southern African region but throughout many parts of the world.

“This e-trade ready programme is poised to positively impact the MSMEs capacity to enhance productivity and be mainstreamed into national economic development programmes.

“There is a need to nurture the MSMEs through this programme, to enhance their business processes and therein improve their customer bases and use ICTs to facilitate their graduation into large businesses,” said Minister Ndlovu.

“It is our most fervent hope that the UNCTAD e-Commerce Readiness Assessment will come up with workable recommendations regarding policy interventions that can be implemented at both the technical and policy levels.”

He said there is a need to address the existing digital data divide for e-commerce to support inclusive and sustainable development that leaves no one and no place behind.