Africa (Commonwealth) _ The Integrated Country Strategy for Zimbabwe (ICS Zimbabwe) has designated Zimbabwe to be Southern African Growth Hub.
Zimbabwe is set to hold strategic relevance to the US, as a potential economic hub for southern Africa. Simultaneously, Zimbabwe ranks at the bottom of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, a prominent index that assesses globalization through international commerce, finance, information, and people movements.
This raises the question of not just what circumstances would allow Zimbabwe to emerge as an economic hub for Southern Africa, but also whether it would be in the US government’s national interest to assist Zimbabwe in achieving that goal.
Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe comprise the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This group of countries is generally referred to as Southern Africa
Furthermore, given that Zimbabwe is a landlocked country, it is now placed 160 out of 171 on DHL’s Global Connectedness Index 2022. This ranks it lower than all of its neighbors, as well as destitute Sub-Saharan African countries like Sierra Leone and Gabon.
These ideas should be adopted by the US Embassy in Harare. This would allow us to envision the “growth hub for southern Africa” as a SADC member state that is highly networked with other SADC member states via links that promote positive change in volume of output or real spending or income of their populations.
The ICS Zimbabwe should include a clear explanation of why it is (or is not) in the US national security and foreign policy interests for Zimbabwe to become an economic center for Southern Africa.
Zimbabwe’s leadership has strong links with major-power rivals and other authoritarian revisionist governments that have indicated a clear ambition to disrupt the international order. According to the ICS Zimbabwe, China has “expanded its influence” in Zimbabwe, giving Beijing “near-unfettered access to Zimbabwean natural resources,” particularly basic minerals vital to the global clean-energy transition.
Simultaneously, the ICS claims that the Zimbabwean economy is now serving a privileged few, including the president, his family, top military officers, and a tiny number of elite governing party and private sector actors.
In this context, it is necessary to define the conditions under which Zimbabwe’s transformation into a growth hub for Southern Africa would contribute to local job creation, greater transparency, local economic development, citizen empowerment, gender equality, climate-smart solutions, and improved labor and environmental standards, among other things.
Simultaneously, conditions must be identified under which Zimbabwe’s transition into an economic center for Southern Africa would complement the administration’s objective of focusing on transnational dimensions of corruption.
Ordinary Zimbabweans would not gain greatly from the country’s transition into a regional business powerhouse. It might very well encourage the rise of corruption and exacerbate the country’s existing huge imbalances.
The US Embassy in Harare, in collaboration with appropriate US government departments and agencies, should develop a roadmap for American and Zimbabwean policymakers that depicts a strategic pathway for transforming Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa while also advancing US national security in a way that promotes both US national security and foreign policy goals, as well as SADC economic growth and opportunity.
This roadmap should clearly outline the resources, actions, outputs, short-term targets, and long-term goals that would achieve a “shared vision of a better, more sustainable, healthier, and more prosperous future” by converting Zimbabwe into a Southern African economic center.
The transformation of Zimbabwe into a regional development hub would be a resource-intensive, long-term aim that would need political and fiscal backing over a period of time that would certainly outlast the life of a single ICS.
