Diaspora Matters

In Southern Africa only 2 countries follow Kizomba Music and they are Angola and Mozambique. Here and there you can find followers in Namibia and Zambia and this can be credited to close proximity to Angola. There is practically zero to little Kizomba knowledge of this music genre in countries such as Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa.

So below we bring you our random 5 Kizomba Music Videos featuring artists from Angola and Cape Verde.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

So the year 2016 has all been about business and more business? With a few hours left before a new year comes in, ZBIN has decided to wind down with a few  rare music compilations. We will only feature music that you are not likely to hear ever on your local radio station or television. We start with a Kompa music compilation. Kompa is music found in Haiti and on number 1  is the group ZENGLEN.

On number one:

On number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

ZBIN continues with Diaspora Strategy coverage.  Information covered on this website is helpful to countries in Southern Africa such as Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

We have already covered the importance of a Diaspora Strategy, the advantages that a country derives from having a strategy in place, how to engage the Diaspora and the various Diaspora Networks that exist. Today we look closely at the role of governments in the Diaspora Strategy Implementation. Should a government actively play a role in the implementation or they should just facilitate?

Successive Irish Governments have built a multi-layered relationship with the global Irish community, one that has marked us out as a role model for many other countries. The Government and the global Irish community have in the past worked closely together on issues such as the peace process in Northern Ireland and the rewards of such cooperation have been considerable. Now is the time to shape a more strategic relationship which will bring benefits both to Ireland and to our global community and which has a more developed economic focus. Our global Irish community constitutes one of the most powerful and far-reaching resources at our disposal and, using our worldwide network of Embassies and Consulates, we have identified some of the most successful individuals from that global community.’ Former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin TD April 2009, following his convening of the Global Irish Economic Forum in September 2009

The above statement captures the simultaneous simplicities and complexities associated with pursuing diaspora strategies. With these in mind, the precise role a government should play in a diaspora context can be highly contested. Given the plurality of approaches adopted by different countries, it is difficult to prescribe any single coherent policy program that a government might adopt in shaping its diaspora strategy. However, there is broad consensus that the role is usually located somewhere between two approaches. On the one hand, a government can adopt an implementer role. This locates the government as a central force in creating and accomplishing the strategy. On the other hand, a government can also adopt a facilitator role, encouraging and developing multi-layered networks with diaspora members and groups. Looking at the various countries, ‘government involvement tends to vary along a continuum from minimal involvement to heavy involvement. Most commentators feel that government’s role should be as facilitator rather than implementer and that government has an important role in giving its blessing, support and, in some cases, finance to diaspora initiatives. The most obvious issue here is establishing why this remains the dominant perspective.

Facilitator rather than implementer: why?

Diaspora engagement Diaspora strategies, like most other forms of engagement, are fundamentally based on networks. Given the volume of diaspora networks co-existing in terms of engagement with the home country, the optimum situation is for governments to create conditions conducive to the existence of a variety of organizations, facilitate collaboration and cooperation between the networks and home situations, provide access to the diaspora for dialogue with government representatives, and fast track promising ideas and/or work in partnership with private sector initiatives. Governments need to be aware that successful diaspora engagement is heavily reliant on dynamic and innovative individuals and organizations at home and abroad. It may be more difficult for a government to merge these objectives through an implementer role. If a government decides to adopt an implementer role then the engagement emphasis is shifted to the government in creating and sustaining suitable networks or policies. Meanwhile, a facilitator role is in itself a form of network. The government is drawn into a more consistent, coherent and communicable engagement with the diaspora. As such, the diaspora is given much more ‘face time’ with the government within the strategy. Therefore, the strategy obtains a larger capacity-building mechanism that works favourably in terms of the realisations and aims indicated above. This, if correctly utilised, can contribute to a growth of mutual trust and understanding between government and diaspora. Such strategies, in a practical sense, ‘do not need to be over-determined and can be quite light in conception and application, and are best thought of as an overarching framework for providing a level of coherence to the range of concrete diaspora policies devised and implemented by a variety of public, private, and voluntary agencies.’

Agency and sustainability One of the most obvious benefits a government can draw from a facilitator role is that of increased agency within the diaspora strategy. This approach encourages more relationships and engagements, which in turn can be used to provide a greater sustainability for the strategy. In this context, the public, private, and voluntary sectors are more systematically engaged, multiplying the central interlocutors in the strategy. Meanwhile, an implementer role reduces such agency and this can be problematic. In essence, a facilitating role places a larger emphasis on sustainability than an implementer role by diversifying agency and producing greater transparency. This can help to encourage and develop a mutual trust and understanding between government and diaspora.

Agency and sustainability One of the most obvious benefits a government can draw from a facilitator role is that of increased agency within the diaspora strategy. This approach encourages more relationships and engagements, which in turn can be used to provide a greater sustainability for the strategy. In this context, the public, private, and voluntary sectors are more systematically engaged, multiplying the central interlocutors in the strategy. Meanwhile, an implementer role reduces such agency and this can be problematic. In essence, a facilitating role places a larger emphasis on sustainability than an implementer role by diversifying agency and producing greater transparency. This can help to encourage and develop a mutual trust and understanding between government and diaspora.

Credit: Diaspora Toolkit

ZBIN continues to engage our Diaspora community especially our active members and the objective is to obtain helpful information about living in foreign land, opportunities that exist and a whole lot of information that is not easily available. Today 2 days before new year, we are fortunate to have a Zimbo sister now based in Kenya. Merryln Kudzai Chizanga -Kika is our official  ZBIN Kenya Contact and below she answers a couple of questions we posed to her.

Here is a true story of what happened some years back. A man (lets call him Mandebvu) places an advert in the newspapers inviting prospective lessees interested in leasing his land for commercial purposes. Hundreds of people respond and he invites them to an interview. During the interview he asks each applicant what sort of business they would like to undertake at his 2 hectare land along Simon Mazorodze Road.

Each applicant divulges information of what sort of business they would like to undertake, whether its profitable and how they would like to pay rental fees. At the end of interviews Mr Mandebvu promises all interviewees that he will respond to them in due course and will lease out his land to the best offer.

Two weeks later what does Mr Mandebvu do? Instead of leasing land as per the advert and interviews, he decides to implement the best business idea from one of the people he interviewed!!! He turns his land into a truck inn located along Simon Mazorodze…what a fraud! It turns out that he hoodwinked the public, he was not interested in leasing his land but interested in poaching business ideas from members of the public. He got free business information fraudulently!

Now this unethical business practice is said to be happening even in the banking sector where you submit your business proposal and someone within the banking system sees the potential of your business and they will turn down your credit application and go on and implement your business ideas, your business models or projects.

In some cases you are invited to rent commercial properties, once your business is thriving, goodwill developed, reliable clientele base developed and guess what will happen next? Your terms of lease agreements are altered or you are frustrated to leave so that the owner of the property can take over your business ideas.

Even ZBIN has not been spared. We gave funds to a well-known website developer to develop a website for the forum. Instead of registering www.zbin.co.zw under our name what does he do? He goes on to register www.zbin.co.zw under his name and changes the name of the site from Zimbabwe Business Ideas and Network and names it Zimbabwe Business Investors Network lol. He took all the website ideas and transferred it to this copy website.

He was a member of ZBIN who had followed all discussions, all updates of what we were doing and our dreams and aspirations. He saw the potential and unethically diverted our website. This is why ZBIN’s website is registered in USA under the dot.com address instead of dot.co.zw, someone unethically registered our name. Now the problem with stealing ideas is that your business will not last. If you are unethical then it is going to cost you in the long run. Take for example this rogue website developer, he was probably going to get a lot of mileage by associating with us. I had told him to do an excellent job so that more ZBIN members will be inspired and engage his services-so he will not get any positive mileage from us.

So we will encourage our members to exercise caution when conducting business activities be it interviews, potential partnerships or rent agreement negotiations. There are a lot of sharks out there who are looking at poaching business ideas. In next instalment I will talk about intellectual property and registering patents.

by Ralph Ohr

As rightly pointed out by Tim Kastelle recently, it’s imperative to distinguish discovery from execution when it comes to startup and innovation activities – bearing in mind that both purposes are complementary and equally important. Along with the case made in my previous post, this suggests following a dual approach to balanced corporate innovation management. The main objective of dual approaches is to sufficiently separate exploration-/discovery-oriented initiatives from exploitation-/execution-oriented ones (e.g. in terms of  dedicated tools and metrics to be applied) while at the same time ensuring an appropriate degree of connection and proper interplay among both parts.

In the following, I will outline a model that attempts to help organizations implement a dual approach to innovation management. This model uniquely condenses and combines learnings from recent research in this field as well as experiences of my own work with diverse companies in various industries. It aims to integrate objectives, activities, requirements and inherent tensions along the innovation spectrum as well as enabling aspects, often being discussed independently from each other. Therefore, it’s titled a model for integrative innovation management.

 

Essential premises for balanced and sustainable innovation management   

In my view, sustainably successful innovation management systems in organizations are required to be based on a couple of essential premises – all of which can be considered necessary conditions. As successful innovation management also relies on additional factors, they are no sufficient conditions, though.

Premise 1: Innovation management follows a balanced portfolio approach. The entire innovation portfolio is divided into exploitation-oriented and exploration-oriented innovation initiatives, where following characterizations hold:

• Exploitation-oriented initiatives are related to running core business by executing and enhancing existing business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value capturing (commerzialization). Examples: Product, service or process innovation, portfolio extension, innovation of selected business model components (e.g. channel or operations), market research.
• Exploration-oriented initiatives are related to developing future business by searching for novel, and often disruptive, business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value creation (configuration). Examples: Business model development, platform/ecosystem innovation, basic technology research & development, startup engagement, innovation intelligence.

The target portfolio including new initiatives is derived from a strategic growth gap analysis. In order to fill an identified growth gap, a company needs to start exploitation- or exploration-oriented inititatives with corresponding sizes and time horizons.

Premise 2: Board of Directors and executive management are committed to attributing equal importance to exploitation and exploration initiatives as both are vital for a company to thrive sustainably. This particularly implies receiving a long term mandate and adequate resource allocation for exploration and its initiatives. Probably the most critical requirement for explorative initiatives to flourish is staffing them with dedicated, high-quality full-time workers. Given that the vast majority of startups fail despite mobilizing dedication from a team that has nothing to lose, not dedicating adequate quality and quantity of workers will ultimately consign explorative ventures to failure. The appropriate ratio of resource allocation between exploitation and exploration depends in particular on a company’s strategy and environment, among other criteria. The CEO (in alignment with the entire board) is in charge to define this high-level ratio for the entire company.

Saul Kaplan has suggested some debunking questions to check whether – or not –  you have a company’s executive management, first and foremost the CEO, on board. Some of them are listed in the following, slightly rephrased for our context here:

• Does your CEO/executive management agree that innovation goes beyond breakthrough products to include business model innovation – entirely new ways to create, deliver, and capture value?
• Will your colleagues tell me that failure is a career-limiting move, or will they tell me that the company celebrates experimentation?
• How much time does your CEO/executive management spend strengthening and protecting the current business model, versus designing the next one?
• Does your CEO/executive management have clear and discrete objectives for both exploitative and explorative innovation? Do you organize differently for each?
• Do internal ideas and projects that threaten to cannibalize the current business model get squashed – or nurtured?
• Does your CEO/executive management have a process for allocating resources for explorative innovation projects that lies outside of the control of business units?
• Do executives with responsibility for explorative innovation report to the CEO/executive management, or to another line executive responsible for today’s business?
• Is your CEO/executive management willing to create a sandbox for exploration, even if it means carving out a part of the current business/market to serve as an ongoing real-world innovation lab?

Note: It’s mandatory to receive CEO commitment and alignment among executive management before putting systematic effort in truly explorative activities – otherwise exploration-oriented innovation will eventually be doomed, resources be wasted and people be frustrated.

Premise 3: Exploitation- and exploration-oriented initiatives are separated in terms of organizational anchoring, governance and funding. The distinct setups are proposed as follows:

• Exploitation-oriented initiatives are anchored in the operational business units. Innovation governance is carried out by a business unit’s executive management as overall responsible and a dedicated innovation board as supporting structure. Funding is covered by the annual budgeting.
• Exploration-oriented initatives are anchored in a dedicated exploration unit, headed by a “chief Explorer” who reports to the CEO – just as the business unit leaders. He is also in charge for governance, supported by a dedicated “corporate innovation board” which is staffed by innovation-related stakeholders across the entire company – in particular all business units are to be represented. Financing is covered by a corporate fund, following a staged investment approach.

This ring-fenced setup enables each of both “camps” to operate as if the company’s future depended on it alone. The operational units pursue prolonging success of their existing businesses. The exploration unit aims at identifying and scaling novel – and often disruptive – opportunities to build cutting-edge businesses. These mutually complementing purposes correspond well to distinct types of transformation efforts, recently outlined by Scott Anthony:

• Exploitation  <=> core transformation, i.e. doing what you are currently doing in a fundamentally different way
• Exploration <=> strategic transformation, i.e. changing the very essence of a company

In the end, this ambidextrous approach involves the highest impact on corporate development. Moreover, it avoids exploration to fall victim to common and dangerous organizational traits: short termism and resource prioritization in favor of core business.

Premise 4: Fostering an innovation portfolio is enabled by a proper idea management system which allows to either assign an internal or external idea to the corresponding unit or to reject it. One common mistake of organizations is to ask employees and external contributors to generate ideas without putting mechanisms in place to act upon them. Therefore, it proves crucial to develop criteria by which to judge and process ideas – particularly including the “crazy” ones. A good example of how an idea management process could look like, is given below. The original figure is slightly adapted for our context.

Adapted from: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/institutionalizing-innovation/

Whereas the upper path is taken by exploitation-oriented ideas with high proximity to the core business, the lower path holds for exploration-oriented ideas with no (immediate) fit with the core business. In order to feed the idea management system with potent and explorative ideas, a company needs to be based on an open, collaborative culture, leveraging a cross-pollinating and serendipity-friendly infrastructure and startup engagement.

 

Three horizons as distinct playgrounds for innovation intiatives

Exploration- and exploitation-oriented innovation initiatives can be assigned to three strategic horizons. As displayed below, the horizons address different proximities to the core business with regard to business model or technological capabilities – and therefore indirectly time scale. The horizons’ strategic objectives can be put in a nutshell:

• H1 – Core: Optimization of existing business models and technologies, addressing of existing markets
• H2 – Growth: Acceleration and scaling of new business models and technologies, adaptation of existing business models
• H3 – Future: Discovery and validation of new business models and technologies, shaping of future markets

Moreover, each horizon is based on dedicated conditions in terms of accounting, metrics, approaches and instruments, as well as organizational and personal requirements. Upcoming posts at my blog are planned to elaborate on this more in detail. In average, the ratio H1:H2:H3 for resource allocation amounts to be roughly 70:20:10. Although this might be a good rule of thumb, a company’s actually required ratio needs to be adjusted necessarily according to its individual context and environment.

Whereas H1 represents the realm of purely exploitation-oriented and H3 the domain of purely exploration-oriented innovation initiatives, H2 can be regarded as interface between both “worlds” – which makes it even more demanding. Main issues in this regard are the integration of exploitation and exploration focus as well as exchange of capabilities between business units and exploration unit for mutual benefit. Consequently, each horizon requires dedicated leadership and management in order to succeed. H1 needs a traditional style if the business environment is stable and rather predictable (e.g. automobile or food industry, public transportation), or a more adaptive style if the environment is highly dynamic and unpredictable (e.g. technology or fashion industry). H3 needs an entrepreneurial one. H2, in turn, relies on a challenging, ambidextrous style at the intersection of H1 and H3. The H2 pipeline is fed from two directions:

• Existing H1 businesses are to be adapted and extended by partially renewing the existing business model or applying new technological capabilities (Adapt).
• H3 initiatives have been validated in terms of their success potential and are supposed to be scaled up. Scaling inititiatives are intended to either end up as new H1 core businesses in case of disruptive innovation or getting integrated in an existing division in case of sustaining innovation (Scale).

Depending on the type of environment a division operates in, either direction tends to be pronounced. If the environment is highly stable and malleable (e.g. offers a potential for disruption), deliberate, and occasionally revolutionary, opportunities from H3 will eventually enter H2. In case the environment is unpredictable and difficult to shape, a more evolutionary and agile approach is indicated: innovation is primarily operationally embedded and driven out of the core business towards H2, where experimentation within the existing business is leveraged to adapt to the changing conditions. In contrast, feeding from both directions is more balanced if the environment is in between those extremes. As most H2 initiatives pose a transformational character, usually coming along with significant organizational change and pain, it’s critical to launch as few of such initiatives as possible at the same time.

 

Takeway: A suggested model for integrative innovation management

The points made above can be framed in the following model for integrative innovation management:

The model reflects some key takeaways:

• Structural separation of exploration and exploitation is crucial for established companies in oder to pursue revolutionary innovation, i.e. to create novel businesses (e.g. through white space opportunities) and disrupt existing ones, mostly operating in mature industries, respectively.
• Prolongation of established businesses is accomplished through evolutionary innovation within existing business models. It requires integration of optimization and adaptation by means of an operationally embedded, agile organizational structure.
• Appropriate integration interfaces between exploration and exploitation structures have to be designed for collaborative scaling of initiatives and mutual capability leverage.
• Pursuing both complementary directions of impact in parallel entails a balanced innovation portfolio and therefore the highest likelihood for company success over the short and long term.

So its 3 days away from the end of 2016? what a year it was! ZBIN continues to forge ahead and we give credit to the strong and active community. We are now 28,000 on Facebook where participation is restricted to a few individuals; most members prefer our Watsapp platform where active discussions go on.

We have over 5,000 members on Whatsapp who are on the following groups:

1. ZBIN Poultry (Our number one group with over a 1000 members)
2. ZBIN Baking (We have over 1000 members on this group)
3. ZBIN Transport
4. ZBIN Agriculture
5. ZBIN Online Forex Trading (Zimbabwe & South Africa)
6. ZBIN HR Resources
7. ZBIN Malawi
8. ZBIN Rabbits
9. ZBIN Real Estate
10. ZBIN Harare-General
11. ZBIN Mutare –Geneal
12. ZBIN Portuguese Groups
13. ZBIN Cape Town
14. ZBIN Mining
We hope to consolidate the groups and ensure that they are effective. We will not be adding a lot of new groups in 2017 but will ensure that the few existing groups are effective and improve in terms of operations. We are also happy to have added groups for foreigners such as ZBIN Online Forex Trading for South Africans, ZBIN Baking and HR Resources for South Africans and lastly ZBIN Malawi for Malawians. We will continue with regional expansion and look at incorporating Zambians, Namibians, Tanzanians and Ugandans.

Successes in 2016

1.Website Establishment: We did set up a website for our poultry group www.zbinchickens.co.zw in April 2016. An excellent resource centre for the marketing of poultry products in Zimbabwe. The site was unexpectedly pulled down by an unscrupulous website developer. The setback did not deter us in setting another website, the www.zbinworld.com. The performance of the website has been pleasing with over 50,000 visits in 2 months! We hope to improve on content and resources. The website is basically a filing cabinet for all of our discussions and posts. We are filing our posts so that one can easily retrieve them because business information rarely expires. In addition to being a filing cabinet, our website a free market place for our members. We are hoping to improve on the marketing aspect.

2.Forum Newsletter: A ZBIN member should stay informed with up to date business information. Business and investment information should be available on your figure tips and no cost to you-this is our motto. We have done our best to update our members through Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and our website. We have also added a weekly newsletter that summarises all posts, trends and new information. We have 5,000 members receiving this newsletter and this is a good number. In 2017 we will be hoping to improve by introducing a ZBIN App which you can download so that our members remain ahead of the curve.

3.Business Tours: It started with my first trip to Tete in Mozambique. I showed you that its possible to go to Mozambique, I showed you that yes business opportunities exist in Mozambique. Iam glad that this helped to inspire more members to visit two additional tours coming after my initial visit. We give credit to Clara Mapfumo and team for organising fruitful tours.

4.Group Meetings: We are slowly moving from being an online community to a business movement where members meet, network, exchange business information and help partner in business. We held a total of 10 business meetings in Harare some for the Portuguese Group and ZBIN General. We are looking to improve in 2017 by covering all cities and towns including the Diaspora. There are a lot of lessons learnt from the previous meetings that we have held-your feedback is useful in planning better meetings.

5.Diaspora Engagement: A quarter of ZBIN members are from the Diaspora and this makes us proud as Zimbabwe’s number one Diaspora friendly community. We are happy that we have members from the Diaspora who are involved in various business activities such as Mining, Online Forex Trading and Poultry. A good case study is that of Mrs Shumba from UK who is running a successful poultry project at her home in Greendale…she gets valuable information on raising poultry and marketing. She is in UK but may be more knowledgeable in terms of poultry than some locals in Harare. What is more? She has a ready market for her chickens thanks to the ZBIN Poultry Group! Who says distance is a hindrance in business?

Failures

We also had failures in 2016 and some of the major failures are highlighted below:

1.Diaspora Connection: Our objective was to hold more group meetings in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and Lusaka. We only had one small meeting in Cape Town and could not hold networking meetings in the rest of the other cities a planned.

2. Local Tours: We planned to have a local tour to help members in opportunity identification skils, this did not happen.

3.Online Forex Trading Fraud: We failed on due diligence and allowed a rogue online forex trader to lead our group. Blessing did not do the forum any good when he ended up creating different profiles such as Evangelist and inviting members to invest with him and failing to pay them back. We have since improved on our risk management and have come up with a policy of no one allowed to trade online forex on behalf of others. Members are only allowed to get free information and trade on their own. We hope to cover more updates on Risk and Fraud on a regular basis.

What to expect in 2017

1.Registration of ZBIN as a company/trust
2.Partnerships between Locals and Diaspora
3.Fund raising for members so that ZBIN can provide collateral for members bank loan applications
4.Better Marketing for members products especially the ZBIN Poultry and ZBIN Rabbits
5.Exports drive
6.More business tours to other areas such as Tanzania and Angola
7.Mentorship/Capacity Building Programmes
8.Registration of individual ZBIN groups such as companies-Poultry, Mining and Rabbit
9.Scholarships for members
10.Field days for the forum
11.ZBIN Gauteng Indaba
12.Improved website
13.ZBIN Apps.
14.More innovation and top quality researches

*We are currently developing a Balanced Score Card for Performance Measurement of the forum and will share in the coming weeks.

Good morning to the ZBIN community we hope you enjoyed the recent holidays and that all was peaceful and safe. So yesterday I got a copy of one of my favourite Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Mail, I failed to get a copy of The Standard. I usually read the two  to get balanced coverage of what is happening in Zimbabwe.

Now in The Sunday Mail is an advert of residential and commercial stands for sale in the fast growing town of Rusape. Now reading the advert there is a lot of stuff missing such as:

• No Email Address
• No Phone Number
• No website Address
• No Photos of the residential stands
• No Map of the residential stands

You see, this Town Council is doing business the old way. They have always placed adverts this way and this has worked, they have been doing this since time immemorial and it has produced results. When Council opens business tomorrow the first thing that they will do is to ask whether the advert appeared in The Sunday Mail and if confirmed then its back to normal council business. All is fine-job well done to the person who placed the advert and the Finance person who processed payment for the advert.

Now analysing the advert it seems there is room for improvement for the council. I have done an internet search of the website for Rusape Town Council and there is none. I have checked on Twitter and Facebook  again the answer is negative.

IT Strategy for Competitive Advantage

The fact that this important town council does not have a website and a presence on social media is not surprising-the issue of websites and social media is not top priority for many councils and even top companies in the private sector. There is often resistance to new ways of doing things especially in rural and urban councils. Most are afraid of losing control or imaginary risks that are posed by new ways of doing business.

Taking the example of Rusape Town Council, they need to have an IT Strategy in place supported by all councillors and relevant stakeholders. An IT strategy that defines the vision, the operation, key benefits and risk mitigation. They need a strategy that helps in the management of the town operations, a strategy that covers website management and provides a framework for IT operations. I would like to believe that they already have one in place but cold be gathering dust within council offices?

Target Market of their advert

Looking at their advert one gets the impression that their target market is local Zimbabweans since the advert is in hard copy form. There is no consideration for people who may miss the advert. There is no consideration of an important population sector-The Diaspora! The town bosses probably do not appreciate the importance of this constituency which is non resident. How is someone resident in Australia, Canada, Mozambique, South Africa or Botswana going to see the advert? Do they have access to the hard copy advert? Even someone in the rural areas such as Dewedzo or Tandi, how is this person going to access this information of residential stands for sale?

Our researches have shown that real estate matters are high on the agenda of Zimbabweans-locals and the Diaspora. Every real estate post on ZBIN attracts more than a hundred viewers within 12 hours. Our ZBIN Real Estate Group has some of the most active members, Zimbabweans from across the world inquiring everyday about the availability of residential stands, residential stand prices, real estate by laws and resources. A good number of Diasporans are interested in buying residential stands and they would like to do the transactions directly without sending any relative to inquire. They would like to contact the City Council directly either through the phone or by sending an email. They would like to see the stands for sale on a website, they would like to see the map of the residential stands, they would like to see videos so that they can be convinced that the stands are real. This information should be available real time for free!

Rusape Town Council and other councils across Zimbabwe do not know what they are missing-Potential Revenue running into millions of dollars. They are not reaching out to this community which has high interest in their services, they don’t know the high opportunity cost of doing this. Some could be struggling to sell residential stands resulting in poor service delivery, some could be failing to access crucial council operation water treatment chemicals and yet out there kune varikuda kutenga ma stands vasina adequate information?

Website as an Investment

The advantages of having a website are plenty, a good platform to showcase Rusape! Investment potential of this wonderful town. A good platform for the town clerk to communicate his vision with the residents of this town. The town council can even save a lot of resources in terms of adverts, no need to place or reduce the number of adverts in newspapers and use their website. In the case of the residential stands-they can place adverts, link the adverts to a YouTube video so that anyone interested in buying can actually see on the place where the stands are being sold. They are also selling commercial stands for filling stations and one would be interested in seeing whether the place is strategic in terms of business-is it near the Harare-Mutare highway? Is it near other Service Stations etc

Donate to Us Function: On the website the council can even put a Donate to Us function so that folks interested in the town can contribute, folks who have a connection with the town can assist in various council projects.

The council can even place adverts from the Rusape Business community and help raise more funds for operations. One of the  hindrances to the establishment of a website could be lack of information on costs. How much does it take to have a well run website? The answer is that they need less than $1,000 for set up a professional website that will help in attracting investment to the council. Money used can be recouped in first 3 months of operations in adverts. They may not even need to put council funds in the development and maintenance of the website-they need to engage the business sector in Rusape who may not have a problem in a site that will help boost investment and their business.

So food for thought to all Rusape residents and the Ministry of Local Government. Look at having IT Strategies as a competitive advantage, lets have websites up and running for every rural or urban council. These councils do not even need money to set the websites -the business community can do it for them.

Lets consider the Diaspora in all council matters because using they are a key stakeholder. Some of them have access to credit facilities where they are based.

NB* ZBIN is offering free services in the design of a world class website for Rusape Town Council and any 3 Rural Councils in Zimbabwe. We will create, help in maintenance and also promote so that the model can be used by other councils across the nation.

We are also advocating for the Ministry of Local Government to create one central website that will initially help in the marketing of residential and commercial stands.

Case Studies of top council websites:

City of London:www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

City of Johannesburg:www.joburg.org.za

City of Cape Town:http:www.capetown.gov.za

City of Ndola: http:www.cityofndola.gov.zm

City of New York: http:www1.nyc.gov

Rusape, Chiredzi, Bindura, Zibagwe or any council can get websites that are better than the above and they do not need a lot of resources for that-all they need is Innovation!

Here is the advert that appeared in the Sunday Mail 12/26/2016

SALE OF RESIDENTIAL AND INSTITUITIONAL STANDS

Notice is hereby given in terms of section 152 of the Urban Councils Act (Chapter 29:15) that Rusape Town Council is selling the following stands listed below:

Tsanzaguru Township Residential Stands(High Density) : Stands averaging 300 sqm

Tsanzaguru Township Instituitional Stands : Stands averaging 2000 sqm

Conditions of Sale

Stands shall be sold on first come first serve basis

First preference is given to those on the waiting list

Those interested are requested to visit the Department of Housing, Health and Community Services during working hours

Rusape Town Council

PO Box 17, 398 Manda Avenue

Rusape

J Maligwa

Town Clerk

We have found a video on Immigration to Australia- a detailed video with all key information you may need, hope this helps members.

So we are coming to the end of year and this period is planning period for the group. One area we are looking at is what have we achieved? We are beginning to look closely at the results versus what we had planned. The successes and the failures and lessons learnt and what needs to be corrected in 2017.

One group we would like to analyse is ZBIN Poultry Group Number 4. This is our best performing group. A lot of information has been shared, business has been generated for members, a lot of resources have been produced and shared. The icing on the cake was the setting up of the poultry website unfortunately the existence of the website was short-lived as the website was pulled down by unscrupulous website developers.

Current major Challenges

1. Marketing: Most members are still encountering problems when marketing their chickens leading to excess stock of chickens and other poultry products
2. High cost of production: The industry is being negatively affected  by high costs of production leading to little profit margins
3. No exports: Few Zim farmers are producing chickens with the export in mind
4. Lack of one voice: Looks like there is no one effective voice that speaks about Poultry in Zimbabwe. One voice that advocates for favourable policies and terms.
5. Lack of Information: With the Economy facing challenges, this sector is encountering the highest number of new entrants. The new entrants have no one place to access information for free or at little cost and this is resulting in hefty losses for most new entrants.

Proposed Solutions

We believe that the 5 problems mentioned above can be partly solved by having a registered trust or company for the group. A ZBIN company made up of the 256 members of the group should be able to have one voice that engages the private sector and other formal bodies in the marketing of our chickens. One group approaching retailers with branded chickens should result in us solving the market issues.

Members operating under one banner should unlock value in terms of economies of scale in production, marketing and promotion. One central place with all resources available should drastically reduce mortality and losses being encountered by members.

So far information is available in a haphazard manner with some of it outdated such that it serves no purpose to our members. Most of the information shared on Watsapp is not saved anywhere for future reference by members. So we are looking at redesigning our website so that we can have a Poultry section where members have access to up to date resources.

Munemo is not looking at heading this company, I have little experience on chicken rearing, we are looking at the active members of the group to come together and elect leadership that will drive the formal body to be established. Iam looking forward to the facilitation of the registration process, we will help you in terms fundraising for an administrator of the company or trust.

Conclusion

So there you are ZBIN Group Number 4, our flagship, our best ZBIN forum we need to move forward and solve the problems we are facing. Our number 1 problem being Market and we believe that by working together as a group we will achieve more. By having one voice that speaks about Poultry Issues in Zimbabwe, we will unlock more opportunities. Marketing Challenges must fall in 2017. More updates on the way forward to be shared on a bi-weekly basis.