Story by Abigirl Tembo in Tajikistan
Vice President General (Rtd) Dr Constantino Chiwenga has been impressed by Tajikistan’s advancement in agriculture, food processing and mining as Zimbabwe explores areas of possible cooperation with the Asian country this Thursday.
He was also struck by Tajikistan’s resilience and innovativeness, noting the country’s significant progress in water management and energy development.
“You see the developments which Tajikistan has done over the years from agriculture to food processing and to mining and the value addition, of all what we are extracting from the minerals, its quest is impressive. What I have seen shows the resilience, the innovativeness of the Tajikistan people. When you look at the development, some of the companies started way back in the 60s and now they have grown to high levels of perfection, but more important is the use of water. Now I can understand why Tajikistan is the king of water in central Asia. The government of Tajikistan has done a lot not only in supplying the water, but they have gone a step further in developing energy,” he said.
He added, “One of the takeaways we have is we are an agricultural country and we should not only do productivity, but we must also value add what we have produced. This is what is very important and there is nothing that stops us from advancing as you are aware now that we have raised the production of our food on our shelves from 35% to almost 80%. We would want to get up to 100% because we have got all the variables on the ground. We should be able to achieve that.
“Secondly, what I have seen on their mineral development when you look at it, is how they extract the minerals and how they go further to process and come up with the end product, like what we see in the aluminum, what we are seeing in the gold and copper. It’s something that we emulate and with the innovation hubs that have been established now in Zimbabwe through the ingenuity of His Excellency the President, we need to move fast and develop ourselves because as we say Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo, thats exactly what we want and our populations are almost the same. They are 10 million, we are 16 million and if they can do it we also should be able to do it ourselves.”
Beyond the conference, Vice President Chiwenga’s visit seeks to fortify ties and identify opportunities for cooperation between Zimbabwe and Tajikistan.
