Why The 1 Trillion Dollar Zimbabwe Economy by 2100 Dream Leads to Shift The Economy From the Struggling Mode to the High Performance Mode

Africa suffers from ten major economic ills. The first is assuming that things economic happen by themselves. The second is living in the past and putting the past between themselves and the future, thus failing to create a different future. One can even argue that Africa is in a worse scenario; one of back pedalling in into the future. In other words, Africa has never had any future beyond political independence. Third, Africa is the world’s leading authority in fault-finding, blaming, accusing, reason-giving, and absolving itself from responsibility for its actions and situations. Fourth, Africa still struggles to escape from living directly on the land and on natural resources; it, despite the ground reality, still believes that its economic emancipation comes from utilising its natural resources, not its mental resources. Fifth, Africa is a grandmaster at underutilising its talent, knowledge, expertise and education. Sixth, Africa still struggles, except for some evil-related phenomena, to believe that not everything that exists is visible and tangible. Seventh, Africa struggles to think big and long term. Eight, Africa is sold so much to knowledge-based education that it is almost blind to the existence of thinking and oblivious to the supremacy of thinking over everything else including knowledge, education and experience. The ninth ill is Africa thinking about, and the management and utilisation of, time. Tenth, Africa does not value knowledge, ideas, initiative and intellect. I can argue that these ten are the core of why Africa lags behind economically and development-wise. They combine to provide a deadly barrier complex to economic and social development that Africa has not been able to escape since its political independence.

The Nature and Characteristic Zimbabwe’s Persistent Economic Challenges

Zimbabwe is part of Africa and is not at all immune to the eight developmental ills that that afflict Africa. Zimbabwe is, in fact, more vulnerable to the ills for localised reasons. Its economy has been struggling for almost two decades. While there are many efforts to return the economy to the path of sustained, rapid growth and prosperity, the progress is very slow and there is little evidence to conclusively say the country has come out of the economic woods. There are many obvious indicators that it is not yet economic Uhuru and to suggest that unless drastic changes are made on the soft economic fundamentals, economic Uhuru is millions of economic miles away. Yet, the permanent and lasting economic solution is found in the ten economic ills I have outlined hear. Yes, this is not traditional economic thinking; but being in this economic situation for twenty years conclusively proves that Zimbabwe’s economic problem and its real solution lie beyond traditional and conventional economic thinking; the solution lies in meta-economics. Meta-economics is the scientific study of the origins of economies, how they operate, their success and failure, their performance and results and their leadership and management. It includes the study of how people produce the economic performance and results that they produce in a given economy. Contrary to conventional economies that seem to treat the economies as if they are persons that think and operate themselves automatically, meta-economics directly links economic performance and results to people.

Zimbabwe’s economic situation may fool you into thinking that the country has been making no attempts at re-correcting its performance, results and course. Hundreds of a mixture of economic indabas, conferences, seminars, summits, meetings and other events have been held by different players but none seem to have, to date, yielded any credible solution to bring the economy out of the woods and onto a path to sustained, fast growth and prosperity. The government, over the past twenty has, produced many economic plans and initiatives with few if any of them having been seriously reviewed and their performance objectively assessed.

Some of the “plans” such as ZIMASSET have been extremely bold and ambitious; in fact too ambitious to some potential investors to attract any serious attention and recognition especially from investors. The plans have suffered at implementation.

?There are some common threads on most of the “plans” that have been produced by the previous and the current governments;

1.??? The plans have been either be election manifesto-driven or midterm plans (five year) that have coincided with the five year electoral cycles.

2.??? The plans and initiatives have originated within either political parties or government with little, if any, involvement by non-state actors such as private sector. Traditionally, the plans have been viewed as “government plans and initiatives” and not necessarily national economic plans and initiatives because of them being centralised in government and predominantly authored by movement.

3.??? Because some of plans have originated from within political parties as manifestos, the plans have expired at the end of the five year periods without any serious, credible performance evaluation. This means every five years have brought some different economic thinking and a different economic focus. With each of the five year economic initiatives being an end in itself, there has been a lack of a long term economic trajectory to pursue. This has been akin to building and exploding five year economic bombs without each bomb contributing anything to the impact of the other bomb because of lack of action and activity synchronisation.

4.??? Since most economic plans have originated from within political parties, the parties have not been able to surrender the plans to the nation especially for input and also for possible critical analysis. Any critical analysis of economic initiatives, activities and plans have been mistakenly viewed as criticising the authors and has therefore not been taken lightly. This has led to the implementation of failed plans and initiatives, an obvious and serious but common strategic mistake.

5.??? In the political hostile environment, the major political parties have never been able to seriously work together on economic leadership, management, planning and development. The railway track politics have contributed to the economic demise of Zimbabwe

Some Major Barriers to Zimbabwe’s Successful Economic Recovery and Fast Return to Sustained Growth and Prosperity

That Zimbabwe has enormous potential for sustained rapid economic growth out of its current quagmire is not debatable. However, the country cannot unlock and release this potential without first dealing with the barriers that are inhibiting the country to access and turn this potential into practical economic results. The following are the major barriers that needs a serious attention. I have not put in the details of each barrier because there is not enough space for that in this contribution. These barriers are in addition to the core barriers that I have defined for Africa.

1.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Insufficient Economic Leadership

2.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Poor National Economic Organisation

3.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Defective Management Theory and Philosophy

4.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Entrepreneurial Deficiency Syndrome

5.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Counter-Productive, Political Model

6.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Short Termism, Short Term Planning and Strategy and Strategic Thinking Underutilisation

7.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Thinking Underutilisation Syndrome

I will provide detail on the six barrier.

Short Termism, Short Term Planning and Strategy and Strategic Thinking Underutilisation

I have already said that one of the country’s major limitations has been its adherence to short-term operational planning underpinned by the five economic planning and political party mooted economic initiatives. This approach to economic planning and management has serious flaws some of which I have already outlined.

The most powerful weakness of five unrelated, unsynchronised five-year economic plans and initiations is that five years is not enough a time horizon for any meaningful strategic planning, implementation and strategic management of any economic plan. This is more so if you are planning for a troubled economy without enough resources on the ready to use in the implementation of the plan. Even ten-year planning horizons can suffer the same fate in the absence of readily available resources, capacity and capabilities.

Strategy, Strategic Thinking Underutilisation

Almost everyone in a position of leadership, management and decision-making knows at some level that their organisations and the economy needs strategy. What lacks is not this awareness, but the correct and accurate theory and practice in strategy, strategic thinking, strategic planning and strategy execution. This lack of understanding of what strategy really means, the importance of strategy, how best to use strategy and how best to undertake strategic planning and implementation is not limited to Zimbabwe in the economic sphere; it is a global pandemic that also afflicts many companies, organisations and economies around the world. Addressing this problem is even more difficult because many people who are supposed to drive strategy over estimate their knowledge and understanding of strategy and its application while they strongly believe they are doing strategy and strategic planning the right way. With this mindset and belief, some individuals are unlikely to embrace the idea that they may have to review their theory and practice in strategy, strategic thinking, strategic planning and the use of strategy. Yet strategic deficiency is the most debilitating affliction of any economy. Any economy sliding thin on strategic thinking, strategy and strategic firepower is doomed to perpetual economic mediocrity. Let me repeat;

Any economy sliding thin on strategic thinking, strategy and strategic firepower is doomed to perpetual economic mediocrity.

For an organisation, company, business or economy in whatever situation, strategy is the starting point in dealing with the situation.

1.??? Economic sanctions need a strategy to deal with them. A strategy is not any kind of plan action or ad hoc but a specific plan of action produced through a specifically defined approach.

2.??? Every obstacle, every goal and every situation needs a strategy, a real strategy to deal with it successfully.

3.??? Having a strategy begins with an accurate understanding of strategy and the right approach to developing a real strategy and complete, credible execution plan.?

4.??? It is, in this case, important not to confuse a strategic plan and a general strategyless plan. This confusion is way more common that you think.

Economic Policy, Economic Blue Prints and Economic Strategy

Many people, including some top decision-makers, are yet to understand the importance of theory in producing practical results. They were, and still are, deluded and misled into a wrong conviction that theory is the useless opposite of the practical. They do not understand yet that theory drives practice and the practical resources humans produce are a reflection of the theory, conscious or unconscious, that they use to produce those results in a given environment and under the given situation and circumstances.

Strategy by its nature starts with theory and ends back with theory. And the fact that half part theory and part practice does not meet that the theory part of strategy is useless. In high stake undertakings such as turning around an economy or shifting the economy into higher performance and results economic orbits demand a serious attention to strategic thinking, strategy, strategic planning and the dedicated use of strategy or the results will be meagre if not disastrous.

The 1 Trillion Dollar Economy by 2100 Dream

I have already said that Zimbabwe has been, for years, running without a long term visionary dream that defines its best possible economic ideal. While this is typical of most African countries, it is worse for Zimbabwe given that it is in economic pit bogs that need more than routine economic maintenance and basic operational economic management.?

I suggest that Zimbabwe adopts a “Sustainable, hyper-growth, 1 Trillion-Dollar Economy by 2100 Dream as its ideal visionary economic future around which everything else social, environmental and economic is planned. This may sound like a useless Utopian thing to do but it is an extremely powerful way of taking the economy away from a life of perpetual struggle. First, it cures the ills of disjointed, short term economic plans. Second, a 2100 time horizon encompasses two and half generations pursuing the same dream and allowing for the cross-generation succession and continuity of economic plans and action to manifest one dream.?? ?

What I am suggesting for Zimbabwe I am also suggesting for Africa as a whole and for all African countries. For Africa I propose a sustainable 100 trillion dollar economy by 2100. Each country can then also have its own multigenerational dream that can be passed down generations.

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?Simon Bere, 2023