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Michelle Moyo, [email protected]

THE Ministry of Industry and Commerce is working on creating a platform that links rural entrepreneurs with established companies and potential investors as part of efforts to promote rural industrialisation.

The rural industrialisation drive is one of the key interventions under the Second Republic led by President Mnangagwa aimed at boosting domestic productivity and widening employment opportunities at a local level.

President Mnangagwa

Under the rural industrialisation drive, communities are capitalising on locally available endowments such as minerals, wildlife, land and water resources, among others to set up commercial industrial activities including localised value-addition projects that generate income for many households. 

In particular, the rural industrialisation drive has been a major success in the agricultural sector where communities are now reaping the benefits of thriving production zones.

It is against this background that the Government is doing everything possible to make sure that anyone in the rural who has a business that needs investment gets adequate assistance to expand business opportunities.

Speaking at the Senate this week Industry and Commerce Minister, Dr Sithembiso Nyoni, said that promoting rural industrialisation buttresses efforts to transform Zimbabwe’s economy and ensuring inclusive development.

“We will link them to the investors, but apart from that, we are developing a programme in which we will go growth point by growth point and make sure that whoever is there and is establishing businesses, is supported and linked to big businesses so that the linkage programme will also make rural areas grow. 

“The other strategy is that we are exporting raw materials and the raw materials come from rural areas. So, the strategy now is to generate value addition where those resources are being generated,” she said.

Through such measures, Dr Nyoni said fostering strategic linkages would encourage rural industrialisation that is anchored on value addition. 

She said her ministry will emulate what the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education has done in Mwenezi where a plant to process marula fruit into different products has been established.

“As a ministry, we then want to go and grow that and any initiative that has been done by our people, we will be there to support it so that rural industrialisation expands and grows.

“The Government does not do business but Government facilitates business. Therefore, I want to again challenge all the honourable members to go back to their constituencies and encourage people to start businesses and see if the Government would not support those initiatives of value addition and beneficiation,” said the minister. —@Lo7246Lovelyn