Story by Bruce Chahwanda, Political Editor
PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa is in Yokohama, Japan, for the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 9), with eyes set on tackling the national debt, climate change, and expansion of renewable energy.
TICAD 9, which is set to roar into motion this Wednesday, has attracted over 40 Heads of State and Government as well as their representatives from Africa.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa will join other leaders at the conference in Yokohama, Japan, with a view to unlocking funding towards addressing the national debt, climate challenges, and expansion of the renewable energy, which the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has already embraced.
The Minister of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion, Professor Mthuli Ncube, outlined the agenda during a media briefing.
“We are here to engage on various development issues that have impacted the African continent with our Japanese counterparts, and the representation is at the highest level. It dovetails with what we are trying to do in Zimbabwe, which is to develop our National Development Strategy 2, which focuses on various development areas.
“One such area for example, is to deal with the issue of debt and debt sustainability in Africa. The other area is how we should go about collaborating with each other to tackle the issue of climate change, changing our food production systems, and agricultural systems. Other areas are in the energy space, looking at how to increase our footprint in terms of investment in the sustainable energy sector, solar energy, hydropower, and how to distribute that power within our region and share the excess power that is available,” he said.
The government has also set its sights on infrastructure development and harnessing information and communication technologies from Japan.
“All areas are being tackled here with over 80 engagement points, and we are here to learn, we are here to contribute. Our business sector is also very active, as our companies sign a few MOUs with their counterparts in Japan for various investment areas within our economy.
One area I should highlight is the issue of our space agency ZIMSAT which we are signing an MOU with a Japanese space agency. Japan helped us launch ZimSat-1. They did the training of our four scientists here. We did an MOU back in 2019 with the Kaisho Institute and we were able to launch ZimSat-1 and now ZimSat-2 is also up in the sky, and we are moving to the next level. Such an MOU will help us advance our space technology strategy and hopefully, this is something that will be commercialised in the end,” Professor Ncube said.
Energy and Power Development Minister Honourable July Moyo disclosed that Japan is willing to partner with Zimbabwe in power generation and distribution.
“I had a separate programme which started yesterday, looking at energy issues, and the aid agency JAICA prepared a programme for us to look at how Japan can assist us in power generation, transmission, and in distribution, as well as distributed renewable energy. This afternoon, we were pitching our investment programme to a number of companies that we think might be attracted to come and invest in Zimbabwe,” he said.
“The biggest company we visited today was Hitachi, where we were shown their factories where they produce transformers, generators and transmission equipment and they have bought a company called ABB, which used to have a lot of equipment in Zimbabwe.
“We think that because of that, the companies in Japan might want to cooperate with us and a number of smaller companies that are interested in solar energy will join us in investing. The Japanese also operate something like 10 power pools, so we can learn from them and we are asking for technical assistance to come and bring our own people here so that they can train and see how those power pools in Japan.”
Zimbabwe has registered milestones in infrastructure development and agriculture at a time when strategies are being explored to harness artificial intelligence, with TICAD expected to avail related opportunities.
