The Buy Zimbabwe Journey

The Buy Zimbabwe Campaign was brought to life at the Inaugural Buy Zimbabwe Conference held on 30 March, 2011

at the Rainbow Towers Hotel in Harare.

It started as a youth entrepreneurship programme called My Own Boss founded by Munyaradzi Hwengwere, a former CEO of ZBC. His vision was that unless Zimbabweans come to support each other

success in their entrepreneurial ventures would be elusive.

From the My Own Boss Concept it wasn't a long step for Hwengwere to come up with the Buy Zimbabwe Campaign.

Buy Zimbabwe has positioned itself as the prime driver of preferred quality and competitive Zimbabwean brands for sustainable economic growth.

It is a competitiveness driver whose mandate is to unlock the country's potential through a structured support of the production and

consumption of local goods and services.

The birth of Buy Zimbabwe was necessitated by the continued negative consumer perception towards local goods and services

coupled with unfair pricing of foreign alternatives, resulting in many consumers, particularly those facing significant financial constraints, opting for imports.

With the government coffers strained to support initiatives such as Buy Zimbabwe, there was a need to position the organisation as selffunding, influential and effective.

The Buy Zimbabwe message therefore is premised on the rationale that if we encourage our people to buy our locally produced goods, the nation will be able to save a lot of money through minimizing leakages from the economy.

This money hopefully can be re-invested, to build competitiveness and economies of scale, employ more people and grow the economy. Buy Zimbabwe thus strives to create jobs, wealth and pride in Zimbabwean products.

This is possible when the government ensures a predictable and stable operating environment. It is, therefore, critical that as a country we implement our policies in an atmosphere which exudes a positive

image and confidence that the government is keen to realise the

vision of an industrialized economy.

Buy Zimbabwe is in full support of the Vision 2030 through its initiatives including the local content policy. Local Content Policy refers to a policy that requires local companies to use domestically sourced inputs and goods as well as domestically supplied services in order to maximise on local; production in the economy.

Local content policy can stimulate use of local factors of production, such as labour, capital, supplies of goods and services, to create value in the domestic economy and hence expand the industrial sector.

We therefore hope with concerted efforts from ourselves and the

Ministry of Industry and Commerce and other stakehoders, we will work

together in pursuit of common vision of a prosperous Zimbabwe;

we will achieve our dream of a proud and wealthy Zimbabwe.

Buy Zimbabwe on the 6th of July 2022 held their highly subscribed Public Procurement Conference and awards attended by President Emmer-son Mnangagwa, who was the guest of honour and several government ministers including the Acting Minister of Industry and

Commerce Hon Soda Zhemu.

President Mnangagwa has supported Buy Zimbabwe from its inception and was last year honoured with the Champion of the Decade award, at the Buy Zimbabwe 10th anniversary awards for his outstanding support for the Buy Zimbabwe campaign and the promotion of local content.

The Public Procurement Conference (PPC) and awards is a leading local gathering of public procurement practitioners, parastatals, state owned enterprises and local firms from around Zimbabwe.

The PPC, which was organised in collaboration with the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ), ran under the theme “Unlocking Zimbabwe's economic potential through public procurement,' emphasising the role of the public procurement potential in driving the country's economic growth through creating jobs wealth and pride for Zimbabweans.

The objective was to advance and share knowledge and best

practices in public procurement while providing privileged networking opportunities with highlevel public procurement practitioners and experts.

The PPC was held together with the Public Procurement Awards which recognise the efforts of public and private buyers to promote and implement innovation procurement by supporting the local industry through procuring from local companies.

The conference and awards, which is an annual event, seek to promote sustainable public procurement which is beneficial to local companies.

It is an interface platform to raise awareness among decision makers, procurement entities and stakeholders on the benefits of local procurement with an emphasis on sustainability and preferential domestic procurement.

The event focused on enhancing the effectiveness of public expenditure for socio-economic growth as well as enterprise development for inclusive growth with lessons drawn from the private sector.

After a remarkable eleven years in which the tide has significantly shifted in favour of local products which now dominate supermarket shelves, Buy

Zimbabwe can look into the future with optimism, knowing too well that we can attain the target of producing 80 percent of our goods and services locally.

Buy Zimbabwe has positioned itself as the prime driver of preferred quality and competitive Zimbab-wean brands for sustainable economic growth.