Levious Chiukira on Customs and Trade

Zimbabwe has faced innumerable challenges on its quest to recapitalize its local industries. The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) Manufacturing Survey notes that the industry capacity utilization fell by 11.8 % to 36.4% in 2019 from 48.2% in 2018. There was a further decline in 2020 due to COVID-19 devastating effects which has already saw contraction of developed nations’ growth projections.  The reduction in capacity utilization comes with costs to both the government and the public as there will be losses in revenue, increased unemployment rates, growing levels of poverty and a decline in exports volumes resulting in further straining of already shortages of foreign currency. This will not be good for the economy and national security. Zimbabwe has limits in terms of available options and has to adopt the most uncommon protectionism  and face the backslash from both internal and external stakeholders.   Polices papers and drafts  have been written a...

  The global COVID-19 pandemic is plunging the world into a socioeconomic and financial crisis of an unprecedented scale, in addition to the acute health crisis. The crisis has exposed and exacerbated vulnerabilities and inequalities in both developing and developed countries, deepening poverty and exclusion and pushing the most vulnerable even further behind. The shattering effects have been more visible to the African continent which has consolidated its energies in the creation of an African Economic Community (AEC) prior to the eruption of the pandemic in December 2019 in China.   Africa doesn’t have the luxury of time and cannot follow the traditional path to economic integration. Africa has to abandon the EU linear model of integration and create our own model which is acquainted with the peculiar African challenges. It worth to mention that the integration of Europe happened at the time the world financial systems had the capacity to fund the initiatives and reconst...