via Zimbabwe has potential to become fastest growing economy in Africa says Harvard professor by Charles Rukuni for InsiderZim
Zimbabwe has the potential to become the fastest growing economy in Africa over the next seven years according to Harvard University professor Ricardo Hausmann.
And this will not simply be because of its natural resources, especially the diamonds that are being discovered all over the country.
Growth, Hausmann says in his 362-page reported entitled: The atlas of economic complexity-mapping paths to prosperity, is “driven by knowledge at the level of society, not the individual”.
According to the report, Zimbabwe has the potential to become the world’s sixth fastest growing economy in the world in the seven years to 2020 behind the world’s economic giant, China, followed by India, Thailand, Belarus and Moldova.
The highest placed African country after Zimbabwe is Tunisia at 47. Followed by South Africa at 55, Egypt at 63, Namibia at 72, Kenya at 73, Senegal at 74 and Mauritius at 77.
The study was restricted to 128 countries, but they account for 99 percent of world trade, 97 percent of the world’s total gross domestic product and 95 percent of the world’s population.
Zimbabwe is, however, fourth in terms of growth domestic growth behind the three East African countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
COMMENTS
Well that will be a dream at the mean time because all those parameters you used for the survey will be channelled to enrich a few select people.
The good Professor is quite right, but there is a very very very long distance between having the potential and it coming to pass.
Without a massive change in the GOZ’s indigenisation rules it will never happen, no chance……
GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER FIRST!
Quite right, indeed. Potential is there… everyone is aware. However, growth will be influenced by two main factors…
A). The availability of foreign investment…
and
B). those funds are used legitimately to increase GNP, rather than becoming stolen and used to line ZANUPF pockets, as in the past.
Foreign capital being the key sure flies a spanner into the crashbox, eh. Those investors didn’t come to control that kind of money by being stupid.
Talk of potential remaining potential until donkeys grow horns.Everone knows its not realistic.When manufacturing accounts for less than 5% of GDP, ll ministers of Finance, Economic development, Trade, Agriculture must do the honourable and resign.You dont run a country on buying and selling, but by manufacturing.Improve technology.We are tired of being a potential country.We want to be the real deal thing
Potential means nothing unless fulfilled! Zimbabwe has been a potential economic powerhouse for three decades now, but where are we??
Remember 1980. The Rhodesian dollar ( with all its sanctions ) was US$1.38 = R$1.00. R$2 = £1.00. Mugabe took charge of the second most industrialized nation in Africa ( After South Africa ) and all was there for a great nation. So with all the potential in the world, it is not going to happen without the right leadership and without a solid agricultural base. Pre 2000 70% of Zimbabwe’s economy relied agriculture so get that sorted and you will see true progress.
Zimbabwe under our able president Robert G. Mugabe will be utopia. A good president indeed
How to fight for freedom in Zimbabwe? How to avoid another Mugabe coming into power? How to fight poverty, inequality, unemployment? How to create equality and decent lives for all? These are the burning questions we must face. Using negotiations and the ZANU structures, Mugabe got into power. From 1980-1982 there was a big strike wave in Zimbabwe. It was the biggest strike wave since the strikes of 1948, and organised from below. Mugabe condemned the strikes as “quite inexcusable” and “nothing short of criminal”, the army and police moved in to arrest militants, protect strike-breakers and installations, enabling dismissals of militants. Kumbirai Kangai, the new Labour Minister, insisted that workers make use of the “established procedures” and threatened: “I will crack my whip if they do not get back to work” Then Mugabe placed the unions under government control: the new head of the unions was his nephew, Alfred Mugabe. His crimes continued after that every year: the Matabeleland massacre, the arrests of dissident unionists, the repression of the 1990s, and finally, the Green Bombers and the attacks on May Day rallies.
There was a long-standing split between the African sector of the ruling class, based mostly in the State machinery and organised through ZANU, and the old white capitalist farmers. In the 1990s, three factors made this division deepen to the point of crisis. A section of the African elite began to promote a strident “indigenisation” programme, aiming to use the State to transfer white wealth to elite Africans. The economy went into a crisis with Structural Adjustment, and the State started to go bankrupt, and saw the farms as a resource that could be used to reward loyal ZANU followers. And the mass democratic movement grew into a powerful force. In this context, Mugabe and ZANU moved against the White farmers, promoting the crudest racism against Whites, while cracking down heavily on the democratic movement. The land could be used to reward his cronies; the racism could be used to discredit groups like the MDC.
It is disturbing how many African leaders, while ostensibly opposing racism, support one of the most vitriolic racists on the continent today: Robert Mugabe. Despite Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, being guilty of some of the most vicious racism, with a disastrous policy of state sponsored terrorism, the stealing and looting of farms and businesses, the murder of farmers and opposition members, terrorizing of Supreme Court justices, bombing of opposition newspaper offices, imprisoning of critics and reckless promotion of racial hatred against whites, the ANC government of South Africa have steadfastly refused to criticise Mugabe.
The crisis in Zimbabwe is severe. The worst inflation in the history of the world. People are dying of starvation in a man-made famine, orchestrated by the ZANU-PF government of Mugabe. Over 5,000 productive white commercial farms have been seized by government organised mobs. Vast herds of cattle and wildlife have been slaughtered. Crops and stores burned. Farmhouses looted. Many people beaten or murdered. One of the most productive agricultural economies in Africa has been systematically destroyed, because of fanatical racial hatred. Not only did these farms feed the entire nation, but they also exported food providing the highest percentage of foreign exchange earnings for the country. These commercial farms were also the highest employers of labour in the country and provided homes for up to 4 million farm workers and their dependants.
Zimbabwe under the disabled, wrinkled, old fool Mugarbage is diaspora and ruined, thank God his time is very near the end! 35 years of waste for Zimbabwe, “Cry, cry my Beloved Country”.
How long before Hitler dies? Mugabe was a greater racist than what Smith could ever be! Smith build up a country. Mugabe trashed the country and his bank accounts are full of money.