My view

Welcome to Zimbabwe ! Where we as a people have since 1955 (then we were called Rhodesia) argued verbose arguments based on ideology (race, tribe, economic system etc) that at its core keeps a certain class of people subjugated with another rich and powerful. these arguments often ignore reality on the ground. Often those in power are shook by this reality that often has far-reaching, earth-shattering consequences. We as a nation have seen reality take control every 25 or so years and really shake these dogmatic ideologies. The first was the racist Rhodesian government's ideology of white minority rule, or "Apartheid lite". The government of the day engaged in inward looking state-oriented economy that was built largely to meet the aspirations of the white minority. Our parents and those that came before them only gained value through serving these aspirations as labour (skilled or otherwise). 20 years of sanctions, civil disobedience and finally armed resistance led the ...

Hi out there. I have been a little predisposed to trying to force my little business survive in what is an increasingly hostile business environment. The hostility has largely been driven by weakening economies across the SADC region. it is estimated that a number of economies will produce less than impressive GDP results this year. Zimbabwe will probably do the worst with our GDP expected to end the year at 29 billion from 31 billion in 2018 (* source Tradingeconomics.com). Looking at the indicators across the region, all is not well. In Zimbabwe what is obvious is the ones who are running the show have returned to money printing which is running at odds with the tight fiscal policy that has been alluded to by our minister of finance in his transitional stabilization programme. In actual fact the resolve of the government has been found wanting as they have seen overtures rebuffed in their diplomatic engagement drive. The leadership in Zimbabwe has largely spurned the goo...

Good Morning this wonderful Monday! Another opportunity to get to those targets set again. Today I want to talk about financial literacy. Financial literacy simply put is understanding how money works. I believe financial illiteracy is the reason behind many enterprises destruction, as the owners in the good times never prepare for bad times resulting in the death of the business at its first real stress. I have been following presentations by many entrepreneurs in Zambia, Zimbabwe and SA. In those presentations, what they have in common, they highlight financial indiscipline and failure to understand money as a key destroyer of not only businesses but also individual wealth. How many stories have you heard of that guy who used to be rich and fell on hard times and never got back? In Africa, I belive financial intelligence and literacy is much more important than the rest of the world as we don't have the support institutions that incubate support and assist wealth...

As an entrepreneur forced into business I have learnt over a short period that our mindset has to be very different to those of others. I will over the next few weeks try to start to focus my blog in a personal way so maybe someone can learn from my experiences. It is my hope that in sharing my experiences with you I too may learn from those who are generous enough to comment with your own views. I will begin with Debt.... 1. Debt is like a drug- *Banks are the drug dealers When beginning a business, you major financing will come from within your close spheres and yourself. Cash is usually tight; and those that lend or invest will do so because of the personal relationship of the entrepreneur ( more than the business itself). As you begin to grow the business and establish a track record, the more established sources of finance will seek to finance you. Be weary of this sudden interest in your business. In Africa, most financial institutions do not tak...

Let me begin with this. I am not against civil service. There are many examples of excellence by civil servants working hard for the country. In many cases these civil servants work for little pay and are often not recognized for the work they do. All too often the guys excelling in very difficult circumstances are overlooked for political and/or personal reasons. However, lets be real, these guys are in the minority. At least over the last 8 years. I begin looking at civil service reform because of the size and effects on the economy. Depending on which source you believe Zimbabwe's GDP sits at between $7.3 billion to $14 billion. So if that is the case the amount of money consumed by government is anything from 30%-50% of GDP. Such a statistic is very worrying. Let me put it in a simpler understanding. If you make a dollar, government will consume between 30 to 50% of that. This does not encourage enterprise nor does it encourage investment. This is what government should...

What is the value we create? That is  the issue to the new Zimbabwean economic reality. This question must be asked everyday, in every household and every sector of the economy. We cannot as a nation go forward without that. By adopting the multi-currency regime in Zimbabwe we effectively removed any ability to improve our competitiveness by manipulating exchange rates. This has been the trick that African economies have been using to essentially "protect" the economy. These policies have, in my opinion, kept our countries only competitive in the primary and extractive industries. This is why when we look at GDP growth in Africa, much of our economy as a continent is dependent on FDIs (Foriegn Direct Investment) and export of raw materials. I need to note that I am in no way against the tenets of FDI and export of Raw Materials, it must not be in the long term economic policy of a country to focus on that alone. Remember that today's FDI becomes tomorrow's divi...

I am back. In recent days I have been wondering what the core of my identity is. To this end, I believe I am most creating. Not creating in the sense of the great writers such as Shakespeare or our very own Shimmer Chinodya, but in the sense of the entrepreneurial minds that driven capitalism since the early man found barter trade is a means of getting what you need and could not attain. So the focus going forward is to provide an "African" view of what participation in capitalism. I say "African" because there cannot be an African view since we constitute nearly 1 billion views feelings etc. Heck, we cannot constitute a "Zimbabwean" view. That is why this is my view. To the item at hand. I came from Zimbabwe the other day only to be saddened by what I see as the stalled Zimbabwean rebirth. Since 2008 and the height of the Zimbabwe Hyperinflation, I was naive enough to think by removing monetary authority from our government, who had clearly failed...

My view: 2012 : Happy new year! Not much changed from the last.. Arsenal got beaten again. I guess you get used to it to a point you no longer feel the pinc...

Happy new year! Not much changed from the last.. Arsenal got beaten again. I guess you get used to it to a point you no longer feel the pinch. We were spoilt in the past to expect excellence at all times. We are slowly becoming a mid table team at this rate. I worry that if we fail to make Champions league this season we can become like liverpool or worse Tottenham.. At least the Africa Nations cup is there to distract us. This year is expected to be the last year of man's existence (if you follow the doomsayers) so maybe that is the thought behind Zambia removing three zeros from their currency that if it doesn't work- who cares. Take it from someone who actually participated in currency revaluation, it is an exercise in futility which has very few benefits except the pride at saying our currency has near value to the more established currencies. I believe that this revaluation will just push inflation on. The cost of a revaluation far exceeds its benefits. I believe Zambia...

Well I just read the funniest thing in the paper the other day please read this first and tell me what you think http://t.co/9ClMiiMo .I am not the foremost expert on monetary economics but this does not make sense. Our government is thinking of reintroducing a currency that was not actually accepted as a form of trade when finally was withdrawn. Well I can't think that this is an immediate strategy, however, I fear for the recovery of the economy if this is the case. The key factors that led to the decline of the Zim Dollar are still very present in the economy un-competitive export regime, large demand for imported luxury goods, the economy is dominated by government and psuedo-government operations, and large parts of the manufacturing industry survived on protectionist policies to allow them to operate. All this is added upon by the fact that political players from the main political parties are so polarized, that making a decision to act for the good of the country often falls...

I have been following my favorite team, The Arsenal and it dawned on me, just like everything else you cannot win without the fundamentals.. The game against Manchester United showed that if you don't get the fundamentals of a balanced team right you concede two goals when you have just equalised and looking to take the lead. Today we have seen the fundamentals of a truly competitive squad being ignored and we have subs who come on and give a tepid performance. Now if these players understood that every game is a test, they would never have the word defeat on their mind. Everytime they put on the shirt they should be playing to impress.. too many coasters. The same needs to be said of too many leaders on the African continent when it comes to the governance of their countries. I am no politician but what I have seen in my home of Zimbabwe is enough to make a young economist wonder what their intention is? Do people intentionally want to destroy the place of my youth? Are these...

I read an interesting article on the way State Owned Enterprises in Zimbabwe are looking to raise finances: read the link http://www.theindependent.co.zw/business/29679-soes-bourse-faces-resistance.html . I can understand the attempts by some poor civil servant in the policy department of the responsible ministry wishing to raise funds, but some of the policies coming out of the economic ministries in Zimbabwe right now are very myopic. Don't get me wrong, I am not challenging the intelligence of the civil servants, but 10 years of sanctions has had an effect on the caliber of ideas coming from the ministries. I guess it is because a lot of the civil servants no longer get exposed to working economic systems. This is because depending on who you may believe, sanctions or economic mismanagement has seen the government fail to hold onto experience. Until a few years ago I was one of the policy makers in Zimbabwe and I understand the difficulty they are facing in crafting policy. How...

I am part of the group of Zimbabweans called the "born frees", essentially we are the ones born after independence. For us born just after independence (1980 - 1990) I believe we benefited greatly from what Zimbabwe had to offer good education system, health was accessible and a large number of our parents were able to improve themselves so as to do better than their parents. Well for our generation I believe it will be very different. A lot of us will not be able to better what our parents did, it will be a miracle if we do as well. I have have been lucky to meet some big names in Zimbabwe whilst growing up Moses Chunga (he was a great Zimbabwean footballer) at a Dynamos game in Mbare, Mumwa Mawere at an NDA talk in the 2000s in Mutare. I met a number of politicians; some I liked and some I didn't. But the common thing a lot of them believed was that us the born frees were not doing enough to look after our birth right.... Zimbabwe. Now I do not know what could have bee...

There is a strong feeling amongst us the "post-independence" generation of Africa that the development models implemented in Africa are designed to keep the continent. The evidence is strong to support this assertion. I mean capitalism in its rawest form is the exploitation of the poor by the rich. Some very clever economists who, after the uprising of the poor in Europe to displace monarchies in the 19th century, cleverly exported exploitation to continue this very Darwinian economic system. I hope the reader is not mistaken by may tone, I am a strong believer in capitalism as the best and fairest form of economic organisation so far. I just do not believe it is sustainable in its form as competition is not encouraged globally. Subsidies in wealthier economies ensure the domination of the poorer areas of the world even if we may have a competitive advantage. It is no secret that if the World Trade Organisation worked properly, Technology would come from Asia, Capital would c...

Well I hope those of you with the dirty minds clean them a bit... I didn't mean that. This is a useful question in doing business in Africa, as it is doubly hard to make a million here! I have just finished reading a book by Andrew Sardanis "a venture in Africa". Now this guy created Africa's first truly African multinational, but a number of factors led to his decline. I do not think there has been a thorough enough analysis of the decline of Meridien BAIO by our more learned in Africa to see what effects it had and more importantly, to propose how this can be prevented from happening again. For us to achieve some semblance of greatness how do we go about it? I mean, we have little access to capital, am now thirty and the only loan I ever had was an educational loan from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe... this was a staff loan. Now if i need to create employment, I need access to capital. I have the training and experience to make a venture succeed, but have difficulty...

A topic that has a very polarized response in Africa. There are largely two camps to the argument of land reform: either you are for it or against it. Empowerment in its most practical form is discriminative. Why do I say this? Well to get one group of people to catch up to the rest of society, one can do one of two things: 1. Exclude the rest of society from competing with the group you want to empower, or 2. Take a portion of resources from the privileged and redistribute to the under privileged. Zimbabwe in the land reform programme chose the latter. Because this was done in a manner that did not prescribe to international standards and indeed people were viciously removed to attain some sort of land parity, Zimbabwe has been vilified. Was the ideal of land reform correct? Yes. Was how it was done correct? I believe the answer is no. Redistribution could have been carried out in a more humane manner. One example would have been to institute a prohibitive land tax on tracts of land ...

I hardly have treated this blog well as I have not been very consistent. I will attempt to do so now. This year's struggle for me is to get purchase my first accommodation. This is a difficult feat all over the world, but this is made doubly so in Africa with lack of credit, or should I say affordable long term credit. Don't get me wrong, I thank God everyday for being African and being blessed in some of the most difficult economies in the world. However, I think we as Africans need to have a true debate over what economic dispensation we want. I went to my bank the other day after feeling a little confident about my financial position (both my wife and I finally have a little left over every month after bills), and asked my banker for a loan to begin my quest to purchase a flat in Harare. The banker looked at me and indicated this was not possible to secure a property in Zim with a loan in Zambia (being an expatriate in Zambia) and I would have to bear ridiculously high inter...

What is happening in Africa? I hear all this talk about changing the continent and what the people in power must do to effect change. Many plans have been hatched around the world to remove this "poor" continent out of its poverty. They wont work. What am I talking about? Well I am talking about the actions of each individual to effect change. I have met a number of Africans complain and comment about how this continent is doomed because of our leaders, how some change must happen and watnot. But I ask what are you doing to effect change? the response, what can I do? well my answer- something. Today, I proffer my humble opinion as we cannot expect the politicians to do it. Imagine if you are put in charge of a bank, and there is no door to it, no audit of funds and refills of cash every day. Would you fix the bank to become more secure? Truthfully most wouldnt as they would just steal what is there. That is African governance. Here are just some of my suggestions; 1. Register...

Yeah I said it! I feel we in Africa have lost the plot in our fight to ensure the lives of all improve. Yeah there is a lot of corruption at the higher end of the social spectrum. Presidents and ministers do steal a lot, but the most damaging corruption is that which does not allow the entrepreneurial spirit to thrive. That is: 1. the customs officer that creates rigid barriers so he can be bribed at the boarder. 2. The police officer who creates problems for you at a road block as you try to deliver your wares. 3. The immigration officer who wants a bribe to stamp the passport even though you qualify for the visa. These crimes stifle our nations and keep us poor. Why does it continue unabated, you may ask? Well our leaders are so busy politicking, holidaying and stealing they do not have time to deal with anything else. That and the fact they cannot stop the small theft provides cover for the big theft. How do we stop it? Well discipline by us who pay for services is the key. We have ...

I was saddened yesterday when viewing issues on Africa issued by BBC news that we do not have any real stories of Hope left on the continent. Gone are the days when we had leaders like Mandela issuing any proclamations for us the youth to follow. I was amazed by comments that Zambia and Malaysia attained independence at the same time but who is more developed now? why? Just a question?