My view

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...