A leader of the Zimbabwean business community expressed expectations that businesses in his country will benefit from China's sustained economic growth and learn from its development model.
In an exclusive interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Tapiwa Karoro, president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest grouping of businesses, said he has been impressed to see the consistent growth of the Chinese GDP over the past decade.
"That has seen them on a very exciting trajectory in terms of the economy. It's already number two, the second-largest economy in the world. What else have we seen out of China? I think rapid urbanization, the development of megacities. They undertook arguably one of the largest infrastructure projects in the world, the Belt and Road Initiative, and that's all obviously then seen them almost directly investing over 60 countries in one infrastructure project," Karoro said.
He noted that there are many aspects of the Chinese development model the Zimbabwe could learn from, specifically from a private sector perspective.
"Certainly I don't think that the growth that China has seen would happen if you had government on one end pushing policy in one direction and the private sector on the other end pushing in another direction. So I think if there's one lesson that we can learn, politics aside, is do we have all stakeholders moving in a clear, unified direction. Are we all clear as Zimbabweans about the agenda that we want to push? And I think that’s what China has been able to do," he said.
Karoro also advocated for increased value addition within Africa and the promotion of value-added African products in the Chinese market to foster more sustainable and robust trade relationships going forward.
"I would at least like to see the African-China trade relations you know being diversified from not just your commodities or raw commodities. I think we would like to see a lot more value addition being done in Africa. I think would like to see more of value-added products from Africa finding markets in China and I think the more robust the trade becomes the more sustainable the relationship will be going forward," the chamber president said.
Zimbabwean businesses hope to benefit from China’s economic growth
