"Zim's Land Reforms Must Inspire Africa"

The Herald (Harare)

ZIMBABWE'S agrarian reforms stand out as an unparalleled success story, which has become a source of inspiration for economic empowerment and development for the country.

Delegates attending last week's African Union Extraordinary Summit on poverty alleviation and employment creation in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, heard first-hand how the country's agrarian reforms are effectively transforming the lives of the previously disadvantaged and poor black majority.

President Mugabe and the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Cde Paul Mangwana, eloquently highlighted to the summit the achievements which the country has scored in reducing poverty and creating employment through the land reform programme.

The country is looking at creating more than two million jobs over the next few years.

This piece of news must have startled some African heads of state and government and their delegations too far away from the reality in Zimbabwe.

The single important message to fellow African countries is that Zimbabwe, just like other countries with oil, timber and minerals, is endowed with land as a vital natural resource.

As the key sector of Zimbabwe's economy, agriculture yields food for home consumption, export and raw materials for the industrial sector.

The country is successfully using this God-given resource to fight poverty and create employment for its people.

Zimbabwe has gone a long way in mobilising resources to boost agriculture and a significant amount of money has been budgeted towards enhancing agriculture.

The African Union has recommended for each country to allocate 10 percent of its budget to agriculture.

But Zimbabwe has, in fact, exceeded this figure.

The Government, through the Agricultural Development Bank of Zimbabwe (Agribank), earmarked $210 billion for use by farmers.

The fund is for inputs and has been available over two seasons up to December this year.

The issue of land as a basis for fighting poverty is such a fundamental national question not only in Zimbabwe, but elsewhere too in the Southern Africa region and other parts of the world like Brazil and Kenya.

Government embarked on agrarian reforms in 2000, redistributing to peasants the bulk of the country's prime farmland previously in the hands of a few white farmers.

The agrarian reforms laid a strong foundation for economic growth and opened up huge opportunities for hundreds of thousands of poor landless families in Zimbabwe.

These families are now proud owners of land, on which they are producing crops and rearing livestock and wildlife for a living.

Beneficiaries of agrarian reforms have indeed become employers themselves in their own right.

They are employing several thousands of workers on their portions of land.

For Zimbabwe, it remains that land is the economy and the economy is land - the vital resource in alleviating poverty and creating jobs for the indigenous majority.