Editorial Comment: Building the new Zim continues in the new year

Today marks the start of a new year, and almost certainly a better year than 2024 which saw Zimbabwe continue to grow and progress, albeit at a much slower rate than has become the Second Republic norm because of the El Nino drought and falling mineral prices.

However, it must still be noted that the economy did grow 2 percent in 2024, thanks to the continuous rise in tourism, the growth in mineral volumes and the added value of more local processing counterbalancing the fall in prices, and steady growth in industry. 

This is one reason why the new year must automatically be better. If we could still grow and progress in a “bad year” then we will grow faster in the succeeding year, regardless of climate and the global economy because we have absorbed the downside and so have the lower base to expand from, and will grow a lot faster given a reasonable agricultural season.

After a long dry December better rains are now falling and in any case the Government has accelerated the refurbishment of older irrigation schemes and opened up new ones so that there is a lot more irrigated land this year with the eventual aim that within a very few years we will be able to grow all our food under irrigation in an emergency.

The Second Republic is continuing with the steady progress we have seen since 2018, as President Mnangagwa stresses that we build our better Zimbabwe a brick at a time. 

The road network continues to expand, as thanks to the Zinara clean up, with that authority now clearing all audit hurdles, there are licence fee funds for all road authorities and the toll revenues for upgrading the national highways. This is why there can be this steady and significant progress for all roads, from the major highways down to the remote gravel rural roads.

On the social services side, the Government has ensured no one went hungry as a result of dramatically reduced harvests in the worst drought for many years, and will continue its assistance programmes for several more months until the new harvest will hopefully make most farming families once again self-sufficient and refill the silos with local grain, rather than imported grain, for the millers and other industrialists.

Still in the social service side, the continuous progress in upgrading the public health and education systems progresses, with 2024 seeing expansion of the health network, more inroads into driving back old diseases like malaria, and new facilities for more advanced medicine and surgery. 

For State schools, another 8 000 teachers are to be hired this year. Some of these will be replacing older teachers who are retiring, although the increase in retirement ages also means that most of the new teachers will be expanding the largest single group in State employment and allowing schools to have smaller classes. The continuous building of new classroom blocks, largely through sensible use of devolution funds by local authorities, means that this is possible.

Again the national budget keeps the provisions for devolution funds, as well as raising medical spending to 13 percent of the budget, and what we are now seeing is a continuous upgrade process of many services as the better local authorities, generally speaking the rural district councils rather than the semi-failed urban authorities, bring new schools, classrooms and clinics into service at regular intervals. 

One reason for this sometimes spectacular growth in rural services is the willingness of local communities to be heavily involved and willing to contribute local materials and labour, and their election of local ward councillors who perform their jobs properly and link the local efforts with the council and its devolution funds. The councils like backing strong local efforts as this ensures the local community take ownership of the new works, and through their contributions allow the council to stretch the devolution dollars. 

Urban authorities do not build these community relations, and in fact seem to ignore attempts of residents to form effective associations and play their part, but some public-private deals, such as the new huge market being built in Mbare, Harare, after a major fire show possible ways forward. But this year does need a determined effort to get urban authorities to mirror their rural district counterparts and get service delivery moving.

The Government is also this year moving with determination to move the informal sector into the formal economy, and for it to pay its fair share of taxes so progress can be accelerated. 

This move stops regarding the informal sector as some temporary edifice erected to cope with bad times but rather sees it as a permanent incubator of small businesses that need to be regularised and able to grow and receive the support they deserve as well as building that network of small family businesses that tend to dominate many advanced economies providing decent incomes to millions of households.

This is the same economic philosophy driving rural development, that the way to progress is to ensure all farmers, including the smallholders, do not just subsist by growing their own food but can become businesses, earning money by growing and selling the right crops and processing some of these crops in their farms or within their communities for sale.

This requires in addition to the direct State programmes, that borehole programme, with new boreholes being continuously sunk, and now the new solar programme that will see rural families and communities getting modest solar installations that provide the essential energy needs that make life a lot more comfortable.

Again these programmes, like the expansion of irrigation and the extension of the road network, are not instant but expand, to take the President’s concept, a borehole and a solar panel at a time. But as long as the drilling rigs keep moving there will be more boreholes and so long as the new solar scheme keeps adding communities and households, there will be progress. 

This is why the programmes are designed to stretch over five years, but every few days another brick is added to building the new Zimbabwe, and that mounts up. We have been seeing the progress every year of the Second Republic, and this year promises to see that progress accelerating.