· Under a project financed through the Development Bank of Belarus and The Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank, Zimbabwe will be importing $58 million worth of farm machinery from Belarus
· The objective is to boost Zimbabwe’s food security particularly in maize and wheat through mechanization and modernisation of farming
Under a project financed through the Development Bank of Belarus and The Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank, Zimbabwe will be importing $58 million worth of farm machinery from Belarus. The export credit facility offered on a long-term basis with competitive interest rates will cover imports of grain harvesters, seed drills, trucks, semi-trailers and a host of other agricultural machinery from Belarus. The first consignment is expected to reach Zimbabwe by the end of this month and the delivery will be completed by December 2020.
The objective is to boost Zimbabwe’s food security particularly in maize and wheat through mechanization and modernisation of farming. A comprehensive training programme for the farmers in using the machinery will also be conducted in Zimbabwe. Experts from Zimbabwe will undergo training in the manufacturing plants in Belarus. A group of trainers from Belarus are also in Harare, for a yearlong training of farmers in Zimbabwe that is expected to revive Zimbabwe’s struggling agriculture sector that was once the pride of Africa.
In the 1980s and for most of the 90s Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa mostly white farmers who fed the country as well as its neighbours and exported to Europe. The sector withered under political pressure on land ownership and the lack of a clear plan for organised land reform. The revolt against white farmers led to bloodshed and random confiscation and ended in the crash of the sector and Zimbabwe’s economy. For example, in 1996 Zimbabwe was growing more than 2.5 million mt of maize,but by 2016 it fell to a mere 500,000 mt of maize.
