Story by Tichaona Kurewa
THE country’s engagement and re-engagement drive continues to gain traction with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) lining up a number of investments in Zimbabwe.
United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s largest free-trade zone, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre is eying investments in Zimbabwe’s food and minerals processing, among other sectors.
Serving as a commodities exchange that deals in precious commodities; energy; steel and metals as well as agricultural commodities, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, whose Chief Executive Officer Mr Ahmed Bin Sulayem was in Victoria Falls recently, is confident of availing a massive export market for Zimbabwean products.
“Another industry that I am here to explore is the meat industry. In the near future, we will be launching the DMCC meats and we are just strategically looking at how best we can approach it,” he noted.
“We don’t want just to have a domestic facility, we want to have a regional facility in partnership with DP World and see how it can best it can help the Zimbabwean meat industry and redistribute it,” he went on.
Investments in solar and mineral value addition are also high on the DMCC agenda.
“One of the investments that UAE might be interested in is solar power, is putting up solar power facilities. That’s something that when the natural diamonds starts running out you might want to work out a facility that creates lebron diamonds powered by solar power. So you have lebron diamonds made in Zimbabwe,” he added.
Increased interest to invest in Zimbabwe by DMCC comes after UAE aviation giant, Emirates signed a memorandum of understanding with the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) expo to boost inbound flights and tourist connections.
There are currently seven weekly flights between Harare and the UAE.
UAE investments in Zimbabwe include Cyber City, a state-of-the-art mixed use hi-tech park in Mount Hampden, being developed by conglomerate, Mulk International.