Zimbabwe industry boss calls on diasporans to boost investment in the country just like international soccer players boost the national team

Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries boss Sekai Kuvarika has called on Zimbabweans in the diaspora to boost investment in the country and attend the organisation annual congress next month saying they are just like the country’s international soccer players who are called up to boost the national team when it competes in continental and global tournaments.

The CZI is holding its annual conference at Victoria Falls from 3 to 6 August under the theme “Glocalise”.

In her article entitled: My football thoughts for the CZI annual conference 2022, Kuvarika said: “When continental or global competition calls, we usually assemble our best local players and call on our foreign based players to be released for national team duty (Zimbabwe Inc).

“As we plan the CZI Annual meet up we are thinking, we need our international based players to come and join the national conversation to help us qualify for some continental and global competition.

“We are inviting the Zimbabwean business leaders, entrepreneurs, policy leaders who are plying their trade beyond our borders to bring home some of their expertise and experiences to interact with our own at home so that we can shift gears to play in the big leagues at various levels.”

Below is the full article:

I am excited about the conceptualisation and planning for the CZI Annual Congress for 2022. It has revoked in me the thoughts of one of the sports I know very little about, football.

I love football by the way, particularly the excitement that comes when goals are scored, I am just poor at understanding the off-sides and other technical aspects of it.

When playing the local league, our local football teams, Dynamos, CAPS United and others have locally based players playing for them, some of these locally based players may also have been acquired from beyond our borders (expatriate players). We have the same in our businesses, economy, enterprise, policy and development partners landscape in Zimbabwe.

And then competition goes continental (since 1980, we have qualified for the continental league AFCON only 4 times) and of course there is the whole World Cup which we are yet to qualify for. We are not alone in these showings by the way but that’s a story for another day.

Back to business and the economy. Our local businesses some of which are multinational hailing from nations yonder and some with executives and technical teams from beyond the borders are here plying their trade in the local economy.

There is SADC, COMESA, AFCFTA and the Whole wide world where our products, services, enterprise and economy (remember the various global rankings on all manner of global indices?) are supposed to play.

Whether we qualify to play and how much of our products, services and entities qualify is a product of our pedigree in as far as the attributes that make us able to compete can take us. Sometimes we realise there are platforms we are not present at.

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