Story by Oleen Ndori, Foreign Desk Editor
THREE ambassador designates bade farewell to President Emmerson Mnangagwa at State House in Harare this Wednesday as they leave for their respective diplomatic missions.
Mr Taona Mushayavanhu leaves for New York, United States of America as Permanent Representative to the United Nations and has pledged to engage the global body on issues of coercive unilateral sanctions imposed on the country as well as Zimbabwe’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.
“I would like to thank the President for entrusting me with this position to be Ambassador of Zimbabwe and Permanent Representative to the United Nations. This is an honour that I don’t take for granted. Of course, in the United Nations, I and my team would want to accentuate Zimbabwe’s policies and positions on various issues that affect the world in the areas of peace and security, for example, issues of disarmament, issues of sustainable development.
“You can associate that with sustainable development goals, issues of climate change, the Kimberley process and so forth. All these things, we have to work at them together with other groups. Issues of what are called unilateral coercive measures, what we call sanctions, for them to be removed, we have to work with others to push that position.
“Issues of climate change and issues of Zimbabwe’s interest in joining the Security Council is a matter that we also want to be lobbying for, for the term of 2027 to 2028. So for us to be voted into the Security Council as a non-payment member, we have to be lobbying continuously. So, these are issues that I’ll be seized with as ambassador to the United Nations in New York,” he said.
Ms Stella Nkomo will be Zimbabwe’s top envoy to India and says she will push for more economic engagements between the two countries for growth.
“First of all, I would like to thank His Excellency for such an honour and a privilege for me to serve at this level as the ambassador to India. Zimbabwe and India enjoy excellent relations, and so much good work has already been done by my predecessors. So my role is to defend and consolidate the good work that already exists.
“We cooperate with India across various sectors in agriculture, health, industry, and technology, and those are the areas that I’ll be looking forward to making sure that we leverage on so that we can at least benefit as a country in line with His Excellency’s vision of a middle-income status by 2030,” said Ms Nkomo.
Zimbabwe’s new Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Mr Jonathan Wutawunashe, has pledged to find new areas of cooperation.
“I’m privileged to go to a country that is of great importance, and His Excellency the President has emphasized the importance of building strong relations with Saudi Arabia. There is so much potential for cooperation in many spheres. Having the first resident embassy in Saudi Arabia will now make it possible for us to explore even more, to communicate more with potential investors, to promote our tourism, to promote people-to-people contacts, to promote more connections in areas even that I shall have to discover,” he said.
Zimbabwe is pushing for economic diplomacy under the National Development Strategy One and so far, the framework has seen increased flow of investment into the country in different sectors of the economy.
