Feeding The Nation

Luke 9-Christ Jesus feeding 5000

Zimbabwe has food shortages. Luke 9, verse16, reports the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5000. It is possible to feed the multitudes with constrained supply.
Zimbabwe, however, does not have constrained resources. Land is plentiful and in most of years water flows. In Luke, Jesus feeds the masses given his purity of heart and enlightened understanding with regards to heavenly supply.

Moses also  understood the laws of divine supply. To master supply, one has to realize resources are God given.

Just like Jesus, we all need to share with those genuinely in need.  The more genuine the sense of sharing, the more extensive our supply. Greed and selfishness, go hand in hand with shortages and lack. The resource globally lacking is genuine compassionate giving.  Giving that empowers and delivers sustainable growth strategies, between Zimbabweans, will uplift the nation. Self interest will not multiply Zimbabwe's wealth, working for win-win strategies will get us all closer to Christ Jesus. The genuine giving of one, supported by honest leadership and direction at every point, will feed the many.

Build On The Rock

Building on the rock is the only way to construct. This applys to building businesses, systems, economies, friendships, even relationships. In constructing buildings, especially large construction projects, surveying to actual building follows principles.
Just as in construction projects, great care should be taken with the economy. Everything is interlinked, these linkages are both domestic and international.
Every decision made personally builds your destiny. As we make choices, we construct the realities of tomorrow. Every decision made impacts others and they respond in accordance to their decisons. Chain reactions create either order or chaos. Building on the rock is building being aware of counterparties and their  responses.

Fergie- Management 101

Success begins with desire. A burning desire to succeed underlies all great achievement.  Sir Alex is no exception to the laws of over-achievement.

After desire comes strategy.  Long term goals and values are vital in guiding one to the top. Fergie built his success on young teams-remember Beckham, Giggs, Scholes, Yorke and associates. To succeed tomorrow, plan for tomorrow and put in place systems that deliver the intended results.

A long term view requires networks. Networks take time and effort to consolidate. It is no surprise, as 11 former Man United players, under Alex Ferguson, also became premiership mangers the network grew further. Good mangers are leaders as well. Performance sometimes needs management,  at other times coaching and leadership are vital.

Alex joined United in 1986, by 1989/90 United was near relegation. Alex persisted and years after United was on top. Even the best of us need a bit of luck. To realize luck, smart work is essential.

Enterprise In Action

The village Market by Angu Walters

Africa is the capital of enterprise. Visit any African village, city or town, you see more traders than anywhere else. Per capita, Africa leads in entrepreneurship. Africa has more self-employed citizens than found in western nations.

Entrepreneurship is plentiful, however they is little heavy industry and mass production. Africa's  neocolonial legacy has played a part in its industrial lack. Business education in Africa is highly westernized. Academic studies, in business, are made for established corporate entities, not the challenges of African self-employment.

Africa has the entrepreneurial drive. Power cuts, difficult roads, corruption, paltry finances, water shortages, do not stop enterprise. They do however cause serious problems and increase costs. Also, they evidence technological and infrastructural limitations-a long term problem. Biased corporate studies do not support self-employed enterprise. They do not give one the competency needed to overcome Africa's peculiar challenges.

Lessons in enterprise propagate the Main Actor fallacy. Hollywood sells the mythical one hero savior. Schumpeter, the father of modern studies in entrepreneurship, sells the idea of the hero entrepreneur. To realize industrialization, Chang states: individual entrepreneurship has to be channeled into collective productive enterprise.

Collective enterprise benefits from capacity and scale. Africa has a lot of individual entrepreneurs. Institutional advances can channel the efforts of smart enterprising individuals into entrepreneurial collectives. Pooling ideas, capital and skills will create corporate entities. Team work is the way forward for Africa's entrepreneurs. Building organisations will develop skills that will form the foundation of future productive institutions.

Opportunity Costs

Opportunity cost is the alternative benefit foregone. If you have $1, and can either buy a loaf of bread or a piece of fish; opting for bread means you miss out on the fish. On buying bread, the fish becomes the opportunity cost.

In real life choices have complex consequences. Opportunity cost shows the dynamic between limited resources, unlimited wants, and the consequent need to make choices. In 1998, Zimbabwe participated in the DRC war.  This  US$200 million campaign ended up costing the country US$1 BILLION. At the time, Zimbabwe desperately needed infrastructural investment and fuel shortages were disrupting local development. Going to war cost the country more than the direct US$1 Billion costs, for  lenders also cut development aid in frustration. Furthermore, blatant waste demonstrated the state was not serious about developing the country.

Opportunity cost is more complex than a guns and butter trade-off. Some decisions have longer running consequences. Zimbabwe currently has international debts of over $10 Billion. The DRC war represents 10% of this amount, and brought no benefit to the Zimbabwean economy. If money had been put into infrastructure, Zimbabwe's current water and electricity shortages could have been mitigated.

Why Zimbabwe Fails.

Why Nations Fail, analyses economic failures. Like every other  modern economics text, it analyses Zimbabwe's economic failure. According to the authors, Zimbabwe fails because the corrupt ruling elite is extracting, or taking, all the wealth and value.

Extractive forces fuel economic underdevelopment. The book is pretty convincing, however, it is overly biased in its analyses of 'underdeveloped countries'. On the other hand, it fails to identify and condemn extractive forces in the USA economy. The alliance of big finance and government is totally pushed to the side. The authors don't see the drag, and negative impact, big USA financial interest has on the US economy, the developed, even developing world.
The authors fail to call out the elephant in the room. Economics impacts politics and vice versa. Every developing country is at the mercy of US coordinated  international finance markets. Rhodesia was sanctioned,  so was Zimbabwe; sanctions facilitate poverty, creating an environment where corruption creates more poverty.

Developing countries are poor, but still pay higher interest rates than everyone else. Debt thus becomes more unsustainable  Not to mention white elephants, studied in the book, are the result of dubious contractors lobbying poor politicians and enticing them with kickbacks. It is no secret; no financier wants developing countries to realize industrial autonomy. International economic strategy ensures countries like Zimbabwe do not realize their potential.

Zimbabwe has corruption. The authors clearly identify Zimbabwe inherited corrupt structures favoring only the 'five percent'. The authors ideas on inclusion leading institutional progression fail to identify the power of policy, and a government determined to deliver industrial development. Historically, these are governments that refuse to depend on aid but facilitate industrial self-sufficiency. Nations fail when they do not industrialize enough and have to depend on other nations. Nations fail when international loans become the only source of income. These failures are part and parcel of a corrupt multinational finance system. It is this system that allows corrupt leaders to squirrel stolen aid abroad. This book completely overlooks the whole financially corrupt international finance system.

Both domestic and international corruption have played a part in Zimbabwe's economic failure. The local elites are doing their bit for the international elites who benefit most  from Zimbabwe's failure.

Zimbabwe Unchained

Broomhilda

Django Unchained has lessons for all. 
Broomhilda, the heroine in distress, is stuck in a world of oppression and exploitation. Like Zimbabwe, she is under perpetual threat.
 All around her are exploiters, money makers and manipulators of all kinds.
 Django, The 'D',  our hero, is on a mission to save her. He learns the ways of the world from a more worldly mentor, and uses his new found skills to save Broomhilda.

The D goes through his training and gets into a violent final confrontation with his darling's oppressors. The moral of the lesson is: it is never easy to change the order of things. Zimbabwe's economic struggle is going to be long and hard. This lesson was repeated in  past chimurengas.
To bring about change in Zimbabwe will require Django's sublimity and guile. Fortunately, it does not require The D's violent heroics. The solution is to stop supporting the oppressive forces economically, politically and ideologically-we learnt that lesson from Gandhi.