Zimbabwe is a land of dreams and time has come for diasporas to invest more at home says Buy Zimbabwe Chairman Munyaradzi Hwengwere.
Speaking to GreatDykeNews24, Hwengwere noted that Zimbabwe could be the place for the fabled land of King Solomon’s Mines.
“Our desire is to attain 80 percent local content in the next 10 years. That’s our goal. Young people, SMEs and large scale companies must eliminate hunger, poverty low levels of productivity”
“Every Zimbabwean must realize that we are indeed too rich to be poor. Buy Zimbabwe must partner liked minded institutions to make sure that all our kids who have become foreigners in lands elsewhere yet they come from King Solomon’s Mines benefit from their own Canaan.
“Imagine people running away from Canaan, is that possible? Let’s all turn Zimbabwe to be our Canaan so that we provide jobs, wealth and pride for our children,” he said.
He also urged Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to join the movement adding that the Buy Zimbabwe campaign is meant for everyone including young entrepreneurs.
“We are going to be measuring ourselves on year to year basis. We recently had our Buy Zimbabwe 10th anniversary awards where the President scooped the Champion of the Decade award, and there are many awards that we gave because we believe in the future of this country.
“Sixty percent of the retail shelf is now dominated by products made in Zimbabwe and it’s beautiful. We also realise that in as much as we have done well, with large scale companies we are performing very poorly in getting our young people to buy into the campaign’
“Our SMEs are also not yet part of the movement. When they hear us speaking about Buy Zimbabwe they think it’s for bigger companies.
“Because of that, you don’t find a mass appreciation of the movement to say this is for me, this is for us,” he said.
Hwengwere added that “Seventy percent of products that go into our mining sector in Zimbabwe are not from Zimbabwe. We used to make these products. We believe it is possible to go back because we have the wealth yet we take it out of this country in raw form,” he said.
Buy Zimbabwe recently held its 10th anniversary awards where President Emmerson Mnangagwa was awarded the Buy Zimbabwe Champion of the Decade Award for utmost dedication to the cause of promoting the production and consumption of local products at the organisation’s 10th-anniversary awards held in the capital last Friday.
Innscor Group scooped the Best Company of the Decade Award while Mazoe was adjudged to be the Best Product of the Decade.
The Buy Zimbabwe campaign is meant to promote the production and consumption of local goods and services on the local and international market.
The Campaign is designed to unlock our country’s full potential and inspire economic growth and competitiveness of local brands.
