HARARE, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's development path inspires Zimbabwe's attainment of Vision 2030, which aims to achieve upper-middle-income economy status by 2030, a Zimbabwean expert said on Thursday.
Munetsi Madakufamba, executive director of the Southern African Research and Documentation Center (SARDC), a Zimbabwe-based think tank, made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua after a seminar organized by the Chinese Embassy in Zimbabwe in collaboration with SARDC in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital.
The seminar, titled "China-Zimbabwe Dialogue: Aligning China's 15th Five-Year Plan with Zimbabwe's Vision 2030," was attended by academia, government officials, business communities, and members of Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party, among others.
Madakufamba noted that China's approach to development and modernization provides lessons to Zimbabwe.
"China has made remarkable progress in terms of fighting poverty. China, being the biggest developing country, has achieved this important objective of fighting poverty. There are important lessons that Zimbabwe has to learn, pursuant to its Vision 2030," he said.
Zimbabwe's Vision 2030 is being implemented under two National Development Strategies (NDS).
Under NDS1, Zimbabwe achieved substantial socio-economic progress across 14 thematic areas, including strong growth rates, rising foreign exchange reserves, and reduced inflation. The upcoming NDS 2, which was recently approved by the cabinet, will be realized through 10 national priority areas, including macro-economic stability, inclusive economic growth, and structural transformation.
Madakufamba said the remarkable achievements by China were possible because of key factors that include strong party leadership, institutional framework, synchronized urban-rural development and people-centered approach, innovation-driven and green development measures, implemented using a whole-of-society approach.
"China has a mechanism where the government, the think tanks, and other stakeholders sit down with villagers right at the village level to understand what their challenges are and therefore design measures that seek to address those individual challenges," he said.
"This is the model that China has used to make the achievements in terms of poverty alleviation. Zimbabwe has a lot to learn from that, as we now move into the implementation of NDS 2, towards Zimbabwe's Vision 2030," the expert added.
As Zimbabwe's NDS1 comes to an end, Madakufamba said the Zimbabwe-China partnership has facilitated key advancements in food security, rural poverty reduction, infrastructure development, digitization, and green development.
He noted that as China welcomes the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan, its developmental experiences are worth noting.
"Zimbabwe has a number of development challenges that include ensuring food security, transforming its agriculture, and also the majority of people in Zimbabwe live in rural areas. So there is a lot that Zimbabwe can learn in terms of implementing its NDS 2, one of which is about modernizing the rural community," he said.
With a large population in rural areas, Madakufamba said China provides insights into rural revitalization.
"Rural revitalization is very, very important for Zimbabwe, and given that that again was the focus and has always been the focus of China's poverty reduction program, there are important lessons that Zimbabwe can learn from China in terms of how China has been able to do it," he said.
In addition, Madakufamba said Zimbabwe should leverage China's zero-tariff policy by increasing exports and scaling up production for the Chinese market.
"The recent initiative that was introduced by China to grant zero tariffs to African countries on certain products. We hope that Zimbabwe moves fast to take advantage of this to access the huge Chinese market, which then becomes important in terms of Zimbabwe's aspirations in promoting its export-led development," he added. Enditem
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