ZIMTRADE, the nation’s trade development and promotion agency, is facilitating the participation of 30 Zimbabwean companies at next month’s Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF 2023) in Egypt.
Speaking at a ZimTrade Exporters’ Conference in Harare last week, ZimTrade chief executive officer Allan Majuru said the trade fairs create an opportunity for local firms to develop new export markets.
“We have been facilitating increased participation of our companies at regional and international trade fairs,” he said.
“To promote intra-African trade, we are also facilitating the participation of 30 Zimbabwean companies at the IATF in Cairo, Egypt from November 9 to 15, 2023. All these export promotion activities create an opportunity for Zimbabwean companies to showcase and engage with potential buyers for their products.”
IATF is the pan-African business-to-business (B2B) cross-sector trade fair. It offers opportunities for African buyers and sellers to meet and explore business opportunities. It attracts investors and trade organisations from across the globe.
Majuru said the organisation has made efforts to provide local companies with a window to identify partners, engage in business-to-business meetings and concretise on orders in the region.
“As ZimTrade, we have also deepened efforts to connect local exporters and buyers in the region and beyond. We recently completed surveys of markets such as Qatar, Senegal, and Nigeria to diversify our export markets,” he said.
“Next year, we will be holding business seminars and B2B meetings to make sure that we tap into these markets. We recently organised a Buyers Seminar as a precursor to this conference. Buyers from Botswana, Qatar, Sweden, Russia, Mozambique, Ghana, and DRC engaged with our exporters.”
- Divine insight: Secrets about prophetic timelines
- Divine insight: Secrets about prophetic timelines
- Interview: ‘We are nurturing vibrant, export-led start-ups’
- Religion: Mixed together the church and the world
Keep Reading
Over the past year, ZimTrade has developed over 20 export clusters across all provinces to integrate rural communities into mainstream export businesses with some now exporting to the Netherlands and Dubai.
The organisation has also established university export clusters to help in the exportation of fruits like watermelons, citrus fruits and baobab.
“We are working on a programme for university export clusters. To date, Chinhoyi University has managed to get a deal to export watermelons to Dubai. They are going to start with five hectares, and this is going to grow up to 50 hectares. The deal is in sight. What is left is to push the product in December,” he said.
“The same applies to MSU (Midlands State University). Our citrus products from MSU are going to be landing in Dubai next year, and the logistics for this have already been set up. On the other side, Harare Institute of Technology has managed to link the best engineering equipment to process baobab powder for our women-led entrepreneurs in Kotwa. As we speak, the deal is being finalised.”
Majuru added that to date, exports for manufactured goods rose by 20% which is double the target set in the National Export Strategy.
