Tendai Rupapa in MINSK, Belarus

First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa’s proposal for a summit between Zimbabwean and Belarusian businesswomen in Victoria Falls, to run concurrently with the forthcoming United Nations Gastronomy Conference, has been unanimously accepted.

The summit is expected to benefit thousands of women, boost ties and enable both nations to come up with mutually beneficial projects covering various economic spheres.

Amai Mnangagwa also invited the Belarusian women to have a taste of African cuisine in fulfilment of the objectives of a global village where people of different cultures appreciate one another and live harmoniously together.

The First Lady, who has a passion for the empowerment of women and has rolled out countless programmes to economically empower this previously marginalised demographic group.

She made the proposal when she, together with a delegation of businesswomen she is leading from Zimbabwe, met representatives of the Belarus Women’s Union. The Zimbabwean delegation also met the first deputy mayor of the city of Minsk and other officials.

The hosts accepted the First Lady’s invitation to visit Zimbabwe for a conference, which is going to leave Zimbabwean women and those from the continent empowered.

The summit is slated to run concurrently with the United Nations Gastronomy Tourism conference being held this month in honour of Dr Mnangagwa’s efforts to promote the uptake of indigenous dishes which have high nutritional value and medicinal properties through her traditional meal cookout competitions. The UN Tourism Secretary General, Mr Zurab Poloikashvili is expected to attend the summit whose aim is to harness the transformative power of gastronomy tourism for the benefit of local communities and territories in the African continent.

The First Lady started the cookout at a low scale before it rose in acclaim and eventually captured the interest of the United Nations.

Amai Mnangagwa has captured the imagination of the world with her life transforming initiatives, which have earned her standing ovations and awards at various international forums.

Dr Mnangagwa and her delegation are in Belarus on the invitation of the Belarusian government and the country’s women in business to forge business partnerships. Dr Mnangagwa explained why she brought along the women in business delegation.

“When I travel, I look for things that are helpful to our motherland, which are also helpful to a number of sectors. Here, I came with women in various businesses who hail from different provinces so that they can lure their friends here and assess that which they can do jointly for the benefit of our nation.

“We are talking about women’s empowerment and development, development of work that can be done by women, development that they can bring back home.

“As you know, we are close to the United Nations Gastronomy Tourism conference which we are looking forward to in Zimbabwe.

“I have invited the Belarusian businesswomen to come to Zimbabwe during this period for a women’s conference with their counterparts. I came with a few representatives from different sectors, therefore, the women’s conference, I am sure will bring out more positives.

She thanked the UN Tourism for honouring her efforts in gastronomy tourism.

“I am also thankful to the United Nations because I started this traditional cook-out competitions as something small, but they realised the value in it for Africa to showcase its culture and cuisines.

“This has united our African continent, so I have invited women from Belarus to come and see how we in Africa and specifically Zimbabwe prepare our indigenous dishes, what do we cook and how do we consume it, how do we welcome people, the hospitality. They will also visit some of our tourism sights. So they will come to be with us and hold a conference with our women and those from the continent who will be attending the UN Tourism conference. It would be a first of its kind conference,” she said.

Mrs Olga Shpilevskaya, chairman of Belarus Women’s Union, spoke highly about the First Lady’s efforts to empower women. “We are grateful to meet the delegation from Zimbabwe here in our territory led by the First Lady who has already visited our country. We want to develop a roadmap that will have tangible results, tangible projects and plans.

“We shall allow ties between the women of Zimbabwe and Belarus be stronger and mutually beneficial in different spheres that include mass media, agriculture, culture and arts. We discussed having a congress of women of Zimbabwe and Belarus in order to unify our women even more and have projects running on the ground.

No matter the distance that we have, as women, we are very close and have a lot in common in terms of our work. We want to thank Dr Mnangagwa and her delegation for the fruitful engagements here in Belarus,” she said.

First deputy mayor of the city of Minsk, Mrs Nadezhda Lazarevich, paid tribute to the involvement of women in various economic spheres.

“Women are important in every sphere in life. There is no sphere that women are not involved in. It is very important that the First Lady of Zimbabwe really takes care and is hands-on when it comes to empowering women. Today, we discussed the prospect of having a common women’s event at the gastronomy congress that you are having in Victoria Falls.

“We want to work for the benefit of the people of both countries. Most importantly we have been discussing that women be present in all spheres agriculture, construction, mining and that we can no longer work without women being present in these spheres.

“We are now standing in the capital of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk and women are present in all spheres including parliament.

“The First Lady noticed how clean the city of Minsk is and agreed that it is important to convey the message to Zimbabweans on the importance of cleanliness and waste management,” she said. Members of the Zimbabwe delegation were equally upbeat.

Media practitioner, Ms Merit Munzwembiri hailed the visit and described it as an eye opener.

“The business delegation in Belarus facilitated by the First Lady following an invitation from here, is an opportunity where the women have had several engagements with stakeholders in different sectors.

“The First Lady of Zimbabwe, Amai Mnangagwa, is very all-encompassing which is why the media was also central to this because she believes that in the whole conversation of developing a woman in whatever sphere there is, the media plays a critical role in shaping the narrative.

“But more importantly, she is focused on developing women in media to shape their narratives,” she said.

Ms Munzwembiri gave the example of clean up campaigns that Dr Mnangagwa champions back home.

“Dr Mnangagwa as a lead champion in the environment sector, the lessons that we have learnt here in Belarus around cleanliness of the environment are takeaways that media in Zimbabwe led by women probably or even men, must champion and also bring forward so that we get a fulfilment of some of the objectives and the development agenda that Amai is pushing.

“Outside that, we understood that the city of Minsk is as clean as it is today after 20 years of sustained and continued narrative to change the mindset of their people to say this is what we need to do. It is the responsibility of the media to carry the narrative of development and empowerment of women be it in mining, in agriculture, banking, and construction.”

“This is the whole idea of the whole journey that has been taking place here in Belarus where the First Lady was connecting the women to strategic partners to see which areas they can cooperate and collaborate in,” she said.

Ms Munzwembiri further spoke about exchange programmes between Zimbabwe and Belarus female journalists.

“As the media, we have had engagements with the local media to see around areas of cooperation. These areas include exchange programmes, technical expertise, skills and equipment synergies.

“More important, the message that would come through is to empower the women journalist, the female journalist who is in Zimbabwe to also be in the front of benefiting from these particular exchanges,” she said.

Mrs Chipo Mandela of Harare province who is into tourism and hospitality industry, said she was excited about the visit to Belarus and promised to share what she learnt with others in the same industry back home.

“We are very excited with the opportunity that our First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa has afforded us as women in business. There have been several key takeaways on the various engagements, we have had with women in business from Belarus.

“Our First Lady has proposed and our Belarus counterparts have accepted to travel to Zimbabwe so that we can have a women’s conference at the same time when we have the gastronomy conference that is being hosted jointly with the United Nations at the end of the month in Victoria Falls.”

“As the tourism community we are very excited because this is going to bring the much needed arrivals into our country.

“This will also afford us the opportunity to market Zimbabwe as a premium destination because we are endowed with several natural heritage sites. We are one of the countries privileged to have the seven wonders of the world which is Victoria falls.

“We also want them to experience village tourism and most importantly the gastronomy, our cuisine that our Amai has been instrumental in making sure we realise the benefits of consuming our Zimbabwean food,” she said.

Mrs Rotina Musara from Masvingo province echoed similar sentiments.

“I am a woman in construction and we are very happy with this visit that was availed to us through the First Lady Amai Mnangagwa.

“We were very happy to witness and to see what other countries are doing in line with construction and this is an opportunity for women in construction to also have the technical expertise, to also have the chance to exchange notes and skills with Belarus, but most importantly we recognise that the national development strategy of Zimbabwe does recognise women towards gender equality.

“We are a progressive country in terms of making sure that women also participate in equal opportunities and we see that Zimbabwe is growing in terms of construction.

“There is a construction boom be it roads, be it accommodation and we are saying the government of Zimbabwe already put a provision under procurement that there should be 30 percent of women’s participation in procurement and we are saying as the construction boom is happening more women should be coming through and also getting opportunities for construction.

“Opportunities like this, will open to us to learn more about super friendly women machines that also every woman is comfortable with, that every woman can also participate and operate and we are hoping that this cooperation that has started happening will bring more women to learn the modern technologies.

“I think we have seen how modernised the buildings are and the world is also going towards modern architectural designs and we are saying where are the women in all that? How can they also be a part of the skills training?

“Amai is saying that more women should also be included in construction, not only on the ground but also the technical expertise of architectural drawings, also the technical expertise of actually modernising Zimbabwe as we move towards modern cities,” she said. – Herald