President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday appointed a 24 member advisory council. The news of course brought all sorts of reactions on social media.
There are a lot of interesting individuals who have been appointed to this council but one name that jumped straight at me was Natalie Jabangwe-Morris, the young CEO at Cassava’s Ecocash.
Natalie has much to add. She represents a new crop of business leaders in Zimbabwe that need to be heard and be allowed to contribute to the nation’s progress in as many ways as possible. She has the passion and energy for this kind of thing and thus I am confident on this one name, it’s not a miss.
The Ecocash CEO is a proper techie who has worked in Fintech for a long time including for NCR in the UK. I am convinced she would have made an attempt to make the president reconsider implementing the infamous 2% tax on all electronic transactions.
The rest of the team
The council has some prominent people and here they are:
- Busisa Moyo;
- Divine Ndhlukula;
- Joe Mutizwa;
- Zondo Sakala;
- Lewis Maxwell Musasike;
- Dr Norbert Mugwagwa;
- Dr Godfrey Sikipa;
- Remigius Makumbe;
- Simbarashe Mangwengwende; •
- Dr Lindiwe Sibanda;
- Aenias Chuma;
- Edwin Manikai;
- Sam Malaba;
- Professor Kuzvinetsa Nzvimbo;
- Trevor Ncube;
- Janah Ncube;
- Dr Shingi Munyeza;
- Dr Kenneth Mtata;
- Simon Hammond
- Richard Wilde;
- Kudakwashe Tagwirei;
- Prof. Robson Mafoti;
- Mfaro Moyo.
Is 24 too much?
Most of the outcry against this council is on the size. Rightly so but…
Whether 24 members is too much or not depends on what the terms of reference of this council are. If this is a pool of individuals from diverse backgrounds that the president has asked to be individually on call whenever he has something to ask then the number doesn’t matter.
If however, this is a council that meets with him and discusses stuff then definitely the soup will be spoiled. We await to hear what this council is all about.
Share
Home
6 comments
That’s NYC I lyk
Why then do we have a cabinet? At cabinet at least is recognized by the constitution. This advisory council is useless like the Montlante commission. The council’s advise can not have more weight than what is agreed upon by the cabinet.
I dont think the idea is for the advice to have more weight but rather to assist govt in formulating policy (Which does make sense to some extent).I however feel that we already have the Zim chamber of commerce and org like the consumer council of zim that should play a more vital role in this . . . unfortunately majority of these orgs are just membership fees collection entities that do not play a critical role in shaping government policies.
To be fair most countries do have these advisory councils that meet with government regurlarly to help shape policy so govt ,labour and business are in sync.
China has got dozens of think tanks who spend all their time anamysing and trying to understand Trump and his motives… Our thi k tank is sectoralised. Which makes a couple of think tanks per sector. If you look at the sectoralised teams you will appreciate that the think tank is not at all that big. All depends on how it’s going to function apart from the quarterly brainstorming sessions with HE.
Zimbos . . . “Govt needs to engage and consult with business on policies”
Govt . . . “We have appointed an advisory committee mainly consisting of business people”
Zimbos . . . “Why do we need an advisory committee when we have ministers”
Bottom line is we are a divided nation if we cannot fix that we going nowhere nomatter who is in power.
I personnaly think the advisory committte or team or whatever is a great initiative under the circumstances.However yes however we should always judge on the output and as to wether govt will shift some of its policies based on the input.
The idea is noble but my problem is that it is very weak in arrears where we need the strongest links. We do not have enough built environment experts. The economy develops on agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. This is what creates national wealth. Tourism and Diaspora remittances must be seen as additional but those cannot support an economy. The current problem in the economy is real growth and that will come from the said economic drivers. The focus of the PAC must therefore be on building/growing the economy. The categories are also not encompassing. It could have drawn from the ZimAsset model which was very clear on the key economic areas.