Story by Stanley James
ZIMBABWE will participate in this year’s third Iran-Africa International Economic Conference, which begins this Sunday. The conference will focus on consolidating economic ties with the Western Asian nation.
Zimbabwe’s participation at the conference in Tehran is a show of confidence by the government in further expanding business ties with Iran.
Zimbabwe’s top envoy to the Islamic Republic of Iran Ambassador Bright Kupemba speaks on the importance of the conference which will also be attended by Vice President General Retired Dr Constantino Chiwenga.
“The focus is mainly on investment, trade, development and exchange of knowledge, it will allow Iran and African business people to exchange notes on business, markets and general global economic trends, and it will give an opportunity for our businesses, to interact with the Iran business community across all the key sectors,” Ambassador Kupemba said.
“The major areas of focus this year are the agriculture, mining and health sectors. It is a platform where African economies are going to learn from Iran, an economy that has been under sanctions for the past 45 years but managed to prevail. This is the experience that Zimbabwe would further like to learn during the conference, it will also give Zimbabwe an opportunity to interact with other African business people and get to understand what is also happening in other African economies.
“This conference and expo will showcase Iran’s achievements in health, agriculture and other key sectors. We have benefitted from the previous Iran- Africa conference, our main areas of interest are in the health delivery systems, particularly cancer treatment, Iran is quite advanced and some companies are willing to do joint ventures with Zimbabwe,” he added.
The Ambassador explained the impact of Memorandums of Understanding signed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
“We have 17 signed Memorandums of Understanding. What has happened is that we cannot expedite all of them at the same time, we have made some successes in the health sectors, we are working with the pharmaceuticals in that sector, and there are joint projects between Natpharm and Iranian companies in the distribution and manufacturing of selected drugs, in the health sector, I think we are making quite significant progress, then we also have MOU’s in Science and Technology, progress is being made in space technology. We have some quite commendable projects in the agriculture sector, in terms of the manufacturing of agricultural equipment between an Iranian company and the Government of Zimbabwe.
“In the tourism sector an agreement is in place where Zimbabweans can travel to Iran for 15 days for tourism without visa, so we have the business pillar and cultural relationships, we are also on the higher and tertiary partnerships with the Iranians. We shall be having a Mid Term Review on the Joint Permanent Commission on Cooperation to review some of these MOUs where we need to fine tune and we hope that will give impetus to the entire progress, we have done everything possible under the circumstances but I think we can do more,” the Ambassador said.
Ambassador Kupemba is upbeat about Zimbabwe and Iran economic ties.
“Iran has been under sanctions for 45 years and all that they have done is as a result of indigenous efforts including mobilisation of local resources, and this is an area where we want to learn, the Iranians have been able to build a resilient economy in those 45 years and they are active in the resource-based economy, they are a model for Zimbabwe and this is actually what Zimbabwe is doing based on the innovations, infrastructure development and technology. In t…
