Agriculture critical for growth
ONE very well known fact worldwide is that job creation is absolutely critical for economic growth. Yet it is very seldom taken into account in national and international economic development plans. is is perhaps because it is closely linked to the whole socio-economic-development plans of a country, whereas economic growth plans look narrowly only at economic issues.
is is particularly so for Africa: all African countries share the challenge of being under-developed. Most African countries, like Zimbabwe, are dependent on subsistence agriculture and the export of its mineral wealth.
In the case of Zimbabwe, 70% of the population lives in the rural areas, and manages to feed itself on a subsistence diet, with very few luxuries. is has been the case for a century. Zimbabwe’s main exports today are tobacco and unprocessed and under-processed minerals. Zimbabwe is still importing most of the food needed for its urban and middle class population, and has even been importing its subsistence food of maize for two decades.
Addressing challenges
Look at the socio-economic-development situation as a whole.
Since Independence Zimbabwe’s economic development plans have focused on the formal economy, developed during the 100 years of settler-colonialism. is built up the tiny economy for the benefit of the settlercolonialists, who at the most comprised only 4% of the whole population. Settlers and colonists did well especially after the Second World War, but began to fail when the Liberation War began in the 1960s. Independence was conceded in 1980 as a result.
After Independence the framework was preserved, but initially there was a determined effort to include the black African population into its plans. is was successfully done in the first two decades after Independence through focus on the social welfare areas of Education, Health and a Clean Water Supply for most of the population.
ese were all highly popular achievements and managed to make the ruling party succeed in its regular elections until the late 1990s, when the impact of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (Esap), began to affect urban workers.
is led almost immediately to the formation of a viable opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC), formed in 1999.
But social welfare without economic growth was unsustainable, especially with a doubling of the population over 40 years. ere are millions of unemployed and under-employed people in Zimbabwe, 94% of whom are now literate, and 60% of whom have some secondary education. About 10% have tertiary education. An estimated four to five million have moved into the diaspora mainly to find work. Zimbabwe’s critical problems, like those of most African countries, are to concentrate only on the inherited settlercolonial economy, neglecting the inherited key African economy, now known and despised as the “Informal Economy”.
is is a fundamental and serious mistake. You cannot ignore reality. Poverty reduction essential for economic prosperity
We need to look at everything. First of all we need to look at the situation where 70% of the population live in poverty according to government statistics, and 50% are desperately short of food and have to get food aid. Poverty reduction is essential.
e answers are available, whether looking at President Delano Roosevelt’s programmes in the US of the 1920s and 1930s, or of China’s programmes over the last 20 years. Both have almost miraculously removed poverty from most of their population.
How did they do it?
Roosevelt invested in providing one million workers with agricultural work overnight, increasing productivity as well as economic wealth. By the 1940s the US had grown to be a first class world economy. China has removed 300 million people from poverty within a couple of decades, no mean achievement.
It invested in education and training from the beginning at low and affordable costs, with construction and local costs being covered by the local communities, whilst policies, syllabuses, textbooks, systems and supervision were provided by central government. In both countries the effort to remove poverty involved both central government and local governments and communities, especially parents. e early success in Zimbabwe was based on such joint effort.
Schools were built by parents and communities, but the government provided a third of the costs as well as plans and quality supervision. Government paid salaries which were affordable. Later the government tried to do everything on its own, but it could not achieve as much without the communities.
Esap said private enterprise would take over the government’s role, and indeed there are now more private enterprise schools, some good, but many poor, but private enterprise is there mainly to make a profit and not necessarily to provide quality services.
Government has a key role to play in poverty reduction and economic growth. Its role cannot be confined only to social welfare.
Successful countries usually have strong and focused governments.
The African economy
Africa has inherited economies which successfully lasted hundreds, some thousands of years. Many competed successfully with the best European and Asian nation states of their day.
e settler colonialist did well for 4% of the population. It is now necessary to look at the whole population. To do this it is necessary to break away from the settler-colonial models and work out the models which can be successful in our situations.
Wanting the same salaries as whites had before Independence, an average of US$500 a month, in a country which now has a per capita GDP of US$1025 per year makes little practical economic sense. In addition, increasing the civil service to cater for our friends just makes the civil service cumbersome and ineffective. Let’s have an efficient and effective civil service and pay them enough to feed themselves and educate their children well. Let’s get away from the figures of the past which cannot apply to today’s economy.
African economies, now known as “Informal Economies”, have expanded to take over the Formal Economy. Today Zimbabwe’s African Economy has more than 5,7 million workers, compared to 800 000 in the Formal Economy.
e answer for the government is to improve the management, infrastructure and technologies of the African Economy, not to hamper them further. Some of Zimbabwe’s African Economy is ready to rise to the challenge, and if supported to do so can double the Zimbabwean economy in a couple of decades.
Look for new markets
Zimbabwe must depend on its strengths and overcome its weaknesses. It must strengthen both economies, not only the inherited former settler-colonialist economy. Most important of all it must look at expanding and improving the agriculture and industries of both economies, and look at developing markets within the region. Zimbabwe is surrounded by many countries, most of which are wealthier and less industrialised than we are, and we have a perfect opportunity to develop these markets rather than depending on the narrow export markets of today.
Chung was a secondary school teacher in the townships; lecturer in polytechnics and universities; teacher trainer in the liberation struggle; civil servant and UN civil servant and minister of primary and secondary education. ese weekly New Horizon articles published in the Zimbabwe Independent are coordinated by Lovemore Kadenge, an independent consultant, past president of the Zimbabwe Economics Society and past president of the Chartered Governance and Accountancy in Zimbabwe (CGI Zimbabwe). — kadenge.zes@gmail. com or mobile: +263 772 382 852.