ZBIN wraps up the carpet making course phase one in the coming weeks. The phase one involved launching the programme regionally which saw us travelling to Malawi, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.

We dared to dream and got interesting tales to tell. Indeed Africa is blessed with endless opportunities, to benefit you need to have a positive mindset and be willing to take the risks. I remember our advert going viral across the region reaching out to millions of Africans across the region….in one weekend we had thousands of people reacting to our advert. We probably had the most invites ever for a Zimbabwean organisation. Thousands wanted us to visit Lesotho, They wanted us in Mzuzu, East London, Cape Town, Francis Town….the list is endless.

We invited a few champions to come for training in Harare and had 7 selected members coming to Harare for training so that they could go and launch it in their countries. It was not an easy decision for those who decided to come to Zimbabwe especially those coming for the first time. Some were warned of human trafficking and we had a gentleman coming to our offices inorder to check whether we are genuine. In Lesotho on the groups we had formed the members started conversing in their local language with the word Mugabe being mentioned several times…before we knew it, the 5 people who were supposed to visit Harare had developed cold feet…they later on found good excuses not to come.

The training went ahead minus Lesotho and we successfully launched the programme in Harare at our offices in Monavale. The trained champions did a fabulous jobs of helping us to coordinate the regional launch in their respective countries.

They helped us to travel to Nelspruit, Durban, Mthata, Joburg, Pietermaritzburg, East London etc. We even went to Lesotho and proved that no human trafficking was going to happen in Harare. Our support to champions in Botswana, Malawi and Swaziland saw us reaching out to hundreds of trainees directly and thousands indirectly.

Success Stories.
1. We helped to form more than 8 women owned companies.
2. Program adopted by 2 governments
3. More than 15 Facebook Pages on tapestry formed.
4. Supported entrepreneurs with funding templates.
5. Added more than 5,000 regional members to ZBIN.
6. Helped secure markets for trainees.
7. Negotiated for establishment of one stop shops for supplies in Limbe, Malawi and Albertina Sisulu Street in Johannesburg.

The program was a pilot phase had a lot of challenges but the overall result is that it was a success. The second phase is going to be bigger and better and corporate sponsored. It will involve the support of the thousands of women across Southern Africa especially in terms of markets. Market fairs, arts and crafts hubs will be following in 2018. We also introduced Digital Marketing hubs and started with the Mpumalanga Real Queens in Action where in the first week they reached 100,000 views-not bad for a pilot project that seeks to help women entrepreneurs with useful business information.

What next for ZBIN in 2018?
A big project is under development. We know the region better—from Cape Town to Walvis Bay, East London to Limbe, Durban to Maseru. In the process we developed strong business linkages, distribution networks and will be using them to launch other initiatives. More to follow once the projects are complete.

Budget Review.
The Finance Minister presented a game changing budget and we think the many analysts we have in the country have done enough justice to the budget. What is perhaps missing in all the analysis is what is in it for the entrepreneur? We hope to cover this in detail during the week and look at specific policies or initiatives that will directly benefit the small or individual business owner.

Another question is why do we have yearly budgets? How about 5 years budgets which are broken down into annual budgets? This will enable us to see the big picture and compare the yearly budget versus previous budgets and performance against the 5 year budget. A five year budget allows a minister leeway to strategically plan for the long term. We urge long term planning and long term budgeting with the yearly budget not being a surprise.

The starting process In budgeting is having a strategic plan or initiative in place which will inform the creation of a budget. The official strategic plan for the government Is the ZIMASSET, how does the Budget align to ZIMASSET? Are there targets from ZIMASSET to be met in the budget? Hoping that in future when government strategic plans are devised, they will align them to the budget for ease of tracking and monitoring. The current budgeting process needs tweaking and we hope next year will be better.

Wots Up this week?
We hope to feature a Bitcoin interview of some of the Zimbos who are doing well with Bitcoin Mining. We have not done Facebook Lives in a while and we will be reaching out to our members to feature on our platform and help others with key information.

Wishing you a blessed week.

Asante Sana

We start the week with a new president and hope to end the week with a new cabinet. We look forward to an A-Team that represents the best in talent that Zim possesses. Zim is not short on talent and His Excellency and team will have to cast their net wide and not only think of locals but diasporans too in search of a winning team that inspires confidence in the economy.

Confidence Boost and Parallel Market Rates.
We have already discussed about the need to create an enabling environment for business and job creation. We wrote a letter to the president where ZBIN members expressed their views on issues they would like the new government to tackle. Some of them were included in the inauguration speech by the new leader of the country. We thank our members for speaking their minds. We are doing it for the good of our nation. The best news of the week has to be small improvement in cash availability. Although coming in drips and drops-there are signs of cash is slowly coming back into circulation. Our members have noted hard cash disbursement at Cabs in Karoi where a clients were withdrawing up to US400, in Harare from banks such as Barclays Bank, Steward Bank and POSB amongst others.

All of this change is happening within a week, we applaud the efforts from relevant authorities and hope that the situation will improve significantly in the following weeks. Zimbabweans on the ground are not interested much in fancy policies….we have heard about them over the past decades…we want results. We want to see ATMs starting to dispense cash before christmas, we want to see increased circulation of money. W want to have confidence that if you leave your money in a bank-you can withdraw it any time. We want confidence in the system and the confidence witnessed during the previous week is encouraging. Parallel market rates seem to have plunged with rates of USD to Bond Note falling from a peak of 1.85 to 1.35. We look forward to parallel market rates dropping further and this will depend on the actions of the new administration-for this week, it looks promising, how about next week? Only time will tell….

One Year Anniversary for ZBIN Website.
The greatest news for the forum is that our website turns 1 year this week. A major milestone for the forum as we have provided our members and followers more than 460 free articles on business in Zimbabwe and beyond. We created a National Filing Cabinet of business articles and resources for the SME sector in Zimbabwe. A digital platform that enables people to access useful information on opportunities in Zimbabwe and how to run their businesses. At a clock of a button, one can access information on what is trending in terms of business in Zimbabwe and the region.

We had the Diaspora and remote areas in mind when we set up the website. A person in the diaspora may not be able to access information on business opportunities easily. There is no diaspora friendly digital platform that helps the diaspora community to make informed investment decisions in the country-so we became the forum of choice churning out more than an article per day. We feel humbled to have thousands of regular followers in Australia, Dubai, USA, UK, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Zambia.

A record 300,000 people have accessed the forum in the past months and this is no mean achievement for a small business site. Whilst initially meant to assist Zimbabweans, we have expanded the focus of the forum and website to include all people across the world. We have covered Trinidad and Tobago, have a solid following in Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia and India. We have provided a gate way into investment and business into Zimbabwe and Africa as a whole.

We thank everyone for the support especially Farai our Deputy Board Chair, a finance professional based in USA. without him providing financial assistance to keep the website running there would be no website to talk of. This helps to show that the diaspora community is extremely key to the business sector in Zimbabwe. We would like to thank SKT Website design for freely providing website redesign services 4 months after the initial website had been put up.

As we enter year , we look forward to a redesigned website that makes it easy to access, download information and resources and providing a great platform for business discussions. We will also be adding more platforms that will help to showcase investment opportunities in Zimbabwe to all corners of the globe.

What Else….
1.We have not forgotten about the Mozambique trip to Beira, logistics are being put in place for the trip that will happen in December.
2. Festive Holiday Business Preps-We hope to do a Facebook Live Video on key preparations that entrepreneurs need to consider in preparing for the festive season business.

Wishing you a blessed and productive week.