Zimbabwe is Seizing its Future

During the great global recession of 2008, Zimbabwe recorded the second highest incidence of hyper inflation in history, as the country's inflation rate for November 2008 was a staggering 79,600,000,000 percent essentially a daily inflation rate of 98 percent. Yes, the commodity prices in Zimbabwe nearly doubled every day. With the unemployment rate exceeding 70 percent, the economic activities in Zimbabwe virtually shut down and turned the domestic economy into a barter economy.

In truth, Zimbabwe had a slow but steady walk toward this turmoil. The country was once self-sufficient in food

production and a major exporter of wheat, tobacco and corn to the 14-member Southern African Development Community, other African countries, and the wider world. Well, you don't have to search much for the contributing factors. For instance, before 2000, farming accounted for 40 percent of all Zimbabwe's exports. In 2010 though, it dropped to just 2 percent.

However, the country is now ready to look forward; the resilience the country manifested during the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a strong testament. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team led by Dhaneshwar Ghura recently visited Harare in September. Dhaneshwar concluded, "The IMF mission notes the authorities' efforts to stabilize the local foreign exchange market and lower inflation. In this regard, the recent tightening of monetary policy and the contained budget deficits are policies in the right direction and have contributed to the narrowing of the parallel market exchange rate gap”.

Furthermore, Zimbabwean President Dr. Emerson Mnangagwa has called on investors to realize the massive investment opportunities in Zimbabwe and shun negative perceptions of risk.