Tendai Rupapa in MINSK, Belarus

First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa is leading a high-powered delegation of women in business drawn from various economic sectors to Belarus at the invitation of the Belarusian Government and the country’s businesswomen for business opportunities and creating synergies.

The hosts are thrilled by the First Lady’s efforts to economically empower women and her philanthropic works through Angel of Hope Foundation, hence the move to invite Dr Mnangagwa and her delegation from Zimbabwe to find opportunities in Belarus.

Due to the respect they have for Amai Mnangagwa, the whole delegation is being hosted and taken care of throughout the duration of their stay.

Through her inclusivity, Dr Mnangagwa incorporated in her delegation women drawn from all the country’s 10 provinces representing mining, agriculture, construction, tourism and hospitality, media, education, beauty industry, manufacturing, banking and small and medium enterprises to be part of the delegation.

Amai Mnangagwa is a hardworking, hands-on and result-oriented woman, who wants to work with women who are also hard working.

She has a deep passion to see Zimbabwe grow, especially witnessing women realising their full potential by being industrious and taking on any tasks undertaken by their male counter-parts.

As Zimbabwe’s tourism ambassador, Amai Mnangagwa was also invited to the International Arts Festival Slavianski Bazaar in Vitebsk (Slavonic Bazaar) which provides a platform to market Zimbabwe, its culture, arts and craft.

The festival has been promoting cross-cultural dialogue among nations.

Dr Mnangagwa included in her delegation a cultural musical and dance group that will represent Zimbabwe on the global stage.

This is not the first time that international global firms and business women have been charmed by Dr Mnangagwa’s women empowerment efforts and expressing willingness to work with her and the women of Zimbabwe in national development programmes.

She was once invited to Guangzhou, China by firms that had been following her work with keen interest.

She took along a delegation of women in business who held fruitful meetings with the Chinese firms, made presentations, formed partnerships, marketing Zimbabwe and luring investors.

Yesterday, the women in business delegation visited various companies including Aftrade DMCC which highlighted that Zimbabwe was important in its endeavor to springboard investments into Africa.

The company has a Memorandum of Understanding with Shanghai, China, which opens up business opportunities to Zimbabwe for up to 4 billion customer database.

Women here are said to be an integral part of the value chain in most factories where 85 percent of all employees are women.

The delegation saw that there was a huge opportunity for Zimbabwe to export tobacco, tropical fruits, juice concentrates, tea and to value add fruit processing.

The firm could also capacitate small holder women farmers with technology on Irrigation and smart building, manufacturing equipment in brick making, IBR/ Chromadek making, nail manufacturing suitable for women in construction.

There were also opportunities in waste management which the First Lady as Environment patron has been spearheading in the country.

Dr Mandas Marikanda, the chief executive of the Zimbabwe Women’s Bank, who is part of Dr Mnangagwa’s delegation, described the trip as an eye-opener.

“We are here in Belarus as women in business. We came on the invitation of Belarus business women and the Belarusian government, which was extended through our First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa. This invitation was on the backdrop of the host realizing the work that Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa has been doing and is still doing in Zimbabwe on economic empowerment of women and raising the living standards of the vulnerable communities. The visit to Belarus has opened our eyes. As a delegation accompanying the First Lady to Belarus, we want to appreciate the Government of Belarus for the hospitality, hosting us on this visit. We have seen opportunities for Zimbabwe to collaborate further with Belarus in different sectors that we have. The collaboration between Zimbabwe and Belarus, has positioned Zimbabwe as a springboard to reach out to many other countries. We are so priviledged for being part of this history in the making for women empowernent through our First Lady,” she said.

Dr Marikanda said Zimbabwe was rich in resources and was available for collaboration to widen its prospects.

“One of the exciting discoveries that we did today was the importance of the textile industry and the role that women play in the textile industry. In Belarus, their textile industry is supported by imports of wool, but in Zimbabwe we have the opportunity because we produce the raw material which is cotton. We saw an opportunity of value adding our cotton, creating the yarn that we need and the production of material and textile. We saw an opportunity and we felt the role that women play especially with the support of women in cotton farming where our First Lady is the patron for women cotton growers who are the principal producers for cotton. There is an opportunity for expanding the production for cotton, there is an opportunity for making women to get more excited about participating in this value chain because we can create yarn and everything up to the textile point. We learnt that 80 percent of the players in the manufacturing industry are women and Zimbabwe has hard working women who have been producing the cotton. They have the capability with the necessary back up of equipment and knowledge. There is an opportunity for creating employment for women in the cotton value chain,” she said.

Mrs Dephine Mbanje, a farmer from Manicaland, said she was grateful to be part of the First Lady’s delegation and thanked Amai Mnangagwa for including women from various sectors.

“On behalf of the women in agribusiness, I would like to thank our First Lady, Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa for affording us an opportunity to be here in Belarus to explore the opportunities in the agriculture sector. We have managed to explore a lot of opportunities in the agricultural sector and we are very happy to see that there is a huge gap for value addition in concentrates.

“We can actually make concentrates from the fruits that we have available back home in Zimbabwe. There is also a huge gap for the export market.

“We are happy to say that when we get back home we are going to look into how we can best utilize this opportunity so that we can contribute meaningfully to the country’s economic development. We will make sure that this benefits other women back home.

“We also want to thank our mother who is the patron for Agric4She who gave us an opportunity as women farmers to be uplifted, empowered and enable us to get in the fields and plough to unlock vast opportunities that are in the agriculture sector.

“She has also helped us to move forward and venture into exporting our produce. We will not end there but continue rising in the previously male dominated field. Through the meetings that we had today, we discovered that there is a huge export market where women from Zimbabwe can export their tropical fruits and nuts to Belarus as well as do value addition of those fruits to make them into concentrates because there is a very big market for concentrates here in Belarus,” she said.

Mrs Blessing Hungwe, a miner from Mashonaland West Province, described the visit to Belarus as a game-changer.

“The opportunities that we found today in Belarus in the mining sector are mainly in the processing of our minerals and value-adding the minerals. We were just mining dolomite and using it for roads, but here, we discovered that we can process dolomite and use it for feedline for cattle feed and chicken feed. We can also process dolomite and use it like rhinoset.

“We can also process dolomite and use it for lots of different things like fertilisers, agricultural lime, different products that we can use dolomite in so there is a great opportunity that we found in Belarus in processing and value adding our minerals.

“I would like to thank the First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa for giving us the opportunity to be able to stand in the mining sector as women and to support us as women because mining has always been male-dominated but she is helping us to stand up and learn more about mining, learn more about processing of minerals and we would like to thank her so much for that.

“Through the engagements that we did today in Belarus they expressed so much interest to bring processing plants to Zimbabwe and work with women in the mining sector to process and value add the minerals. We are also grateful to our host for inviting us here and hosting us,” she said.

Recently, President Lukashenko donated an ultra-modern, top-notch mobile hospital to Dr Mnangagwa’s Angel of Hope Foundation enhancing her capacity to serve disadvantaged communities in all corners of the country, including hard-to-reachu areas.

The gesture indicated that the First Lady’s philanthropic work has captured the imagination of the world. – Herald