Zim working on Industrial Development Policy

The Zimbabwe government is formulating its Industrial Development Policy (IDP) as part of its
determination to become an upper middle income nation by 2030, a Cabinet Minister has said.

Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira said this during a consultative meeting on the New Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP) in the capital on Tuesday.

He said Zimbabwe wants to stand as an industrialising rather than a buying nation, and a manufacturer rather than a shopper.

Prof Murwira said industrialisation is a product of innovation which is either exogenous or endogenous to a nation and there is need to understand what will be satisfied by any innovation before going to full scale industrialization.

“Otherwise there is risk of developing industries that have solely foreign origins, which is not sustainable. We therefore, also have to characterise the nature of our industry pipelines in terms of which one between the endogenous and exogenous innovation is dominating the economy. Our desire is for endogenous industry pipeline to have a relatively bigger pipeline than the exogenous industry pipeline,” he said.

“Heritage refers to our natural endowments; flora, fauna, water, minerals and our people. Our heritage from flora, fauna, water, and minerals must be the basis of our value chains.”

“These value chains have to be endogenous value chains for example favouring Mapfura value chain over oranges value chain or favouring mazhanje value chain over apple value chain and many other related examples.”

Prof Murwira said the weak link between a country’s education system and industry is proven when the country imports its needs instead of producing from its factories.

“We therefore, have proposed a grand plan for industrialising and modernising our nation. In this grand plan, our innovation science and technology system must be the provider and facilitator of wealth creation through dominating the technology trajectory via endogenous innovation that lead to the production of quality goods and services,” he said.

He said the grand plan should be supported by a strong framework with inputs, processes and outputs.

“Our input shall be our heritage that includes our people and our natural resources. The processes shall include the configuration of our education, innovation, science and technology systems to provide the necessary capabilities to produce the desired output in the form of industrialisation and modernisation of Zimbabwe,” he explained.

He explained that a good IDP causes the setting of industrial parks, understand the origins of industry and support industrial programmes, human capital development, infrastructure-machines and buildings, laws and finances.

“As we craft our Industrial Development Policy (IDP) we take into account that industrial policy addresses both thematic/value chains and spatial, thus following geographical spread, for example rural industrialisation,” he said.

New Ziana