Bulawayo, (New Ziana)-African countries should move away from prioritising international trading and start focusing on strengthening regional integration, an official said.
Speaking at a breakfast meeting on Thursday to prepare local businesses for participation in the 4th Intra-Africa Trade Fair (IATF) 2025 in Algeria in September this year, ZimTrade chief executive officer Allan Majuru said regional trade has emerged as a key driver of economic growth in developed regions like Europe and Asia.
Organized by the African Export Bank (Afreximbank), the African Union (AU) and the AfCFTA) secretariat, the IATF brings together over 2 000 exhibitors from 75 countries, offering unmatched opportunities for trade, investment matchmaking and business networking.
This year the expo will run from September 4 to 10 and is expected to facilitate over US $44 billion in trade and investment deals.
“Globally, regional trade has become one of the key drivers of economic growth, we have seen this clearly in regions like Europe and Asia. Yet Africa continues to trade more externally than within our own continent. Currently, intra-African trade accounts for less than 15 percent of our total trade volume.
Zimbabwe’s participation in this intra-trade remains relatively low, but this gap represents a significant opportunity for us to claim our rightful market share.
“We are looking at a US$3.5 trillion market opportunity. As a nation, we must strategically position ourselves to capitalize on this potential,” said Majuru, adding ZIMTRADE was ready to position Zimbabwe among Africa’s top source markets.
“We have already secured our exhibition space and are currently mobilizing companies for the September fair. Our target is to bring a delegation of 30 companies, with the majority hopefully coming from Bulawayo. To demonstrate this is not just talk, in the previous Egypt edition, we successfully facilitated deals worth approximately $60 million,” Majuru said, adding that the event’s broader scope extends beyond trade to include investment and tourism opportunities.
Majuru also observed that entrepreneurs typically concentrate on goods, but emphasized the growing importance of services in today’s trade landscape.
“Services are also equally important. We must ensure that when we establish our presence in Algeria, we are not solely focused on goods, but equally on services.
What makes this platform powerful isn’t just the figures, it’s the partnerships forged and the long-term opportunities created,” he said. He outlined ZimTrade’s initiatives to support export growth, highlighting specialized programs for different categories.
“We have what we call the Next Year Exporter Program, mainly targeted at women-led enterprises that are getting into exports. Most of them have participated in these trade shows and managed to get deals. We also have Eagle’s Nest that has helped our youth to get into the mainstream export business, and they are doing well,” he said.
Majuru detailed ZimTrade’s market intelligence efforts across Africa to know what is being offered for local entrepreneurs. “We have managed to do market scans in Africa. Having a market is one thing, but knowing what the market offers is another thing.
We have done market scans in a number of African countries. “For this year, we have been to Equatorial Guinea, Beira and Tete in Mozambique to see what is there. We have also scanned Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, just to mention a few,” he said.
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