The Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA) was last week forced to restate its mandate to calm the nerves of investors.
In a cheeky tweet, ZIDA said: “Our mandate as stipulated in the ZIDA Act is to promote and facilitate both local and foreign investment in the country. [The] One Stop Investment Service Centre is modelled to create a seamless experience from company registration to permits and licenses.”
The tweet was accompanied by a picture of a man signalling to those watching to use their brains adjacent to some words: “There is absolutely no need for middlemen, consultants or agents”.
To the uninitiated, the tweet was just a restatement of its reasons for existence. For observers, they had to do it after the Office of the Presidential Envoy and Ambassador at Large to Europe and the Americas (OPEAAL) told investors last week to engage its office.
Since his appointment in March as the Presidential Envoy and Ambassador at Large to Europe and the Americas, preacher Uebert Angel has been on a crusade to lure investors.
As an assurance to investors that their investments would be safe in Zimbabwe, the prosperity preacher is building a 6000-seater conference centre, the biggest in Zimbabwe, in Harare’s Braeside suburb.
There is a need to draw a line on what OPEAAL and ZIDA must do. ZIDA duties are covered in the ZIDA Act.
When the message goes out to investors, it has to be consistent and remove the uncertainty the President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration says was the hallmark of its predecessor.
A number of organisations have been set up to lure investors under the ‘Zimbabwe is open for business’ mantra. President Mnangagwa has been telling Zimbabwe’s diplomats to focus more on economic diplomacy to lure foreign investors.
Investors have in the past given Zimbabwe a wide berth on toxic economic policies such as the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act and a poisoned political environment.
The Mnangagwa administration has been working round the clock to give assurance to investors that their investments are safe.
The administration’s efforts were bolstered by Afreximbank which has provided a guarantee to foreign investors under the ZimOpen initiative.
A number of organisations have sprouted up to help lure investors. The more the merrier but the messaging has to be uniform.
Who does what, when and how has to be clearly spelt to avoid duplication or one organisation encroaching onto the lane of another.
Experience has shown that some thrive on confusion and fleece off investors under the guise of paying for facilitation fees to oil the wheels of bureaucracy. Zimbabwe cannot go back to that dark past.
Zimbabwe badly needs foreign direct investment. All the efforts done since 2017 cannot go to waste by our failure to put our house in order. There are so many investment destinations chasing the same investors.
