Mnangagwa’s trumpeted $27bn investment delivers empty promises

Harare/Johannesburg — When Emmerson Mnangagwa took over the leadership of Zimbabwe from Robert Mugabe in November 2017, he promised to revive the moribund economy and adopted a mantra he’s repeated regularly ever since: “Zimbabwe is open for business”.

Together with the enthusiastic support of state media, Mnangagwa and his officials have announced more than $27bn of planned investment ranging from new platinum mines to steel mills and hydropower dams.The economy is in its most dire state since 2008, when inflation surged to an estimated 500-billion percent. Medicines, fuel and foreign currency are in short supply, prices of basic goods such as bread are surging and the IMF has forecast the first economic contraction in 11 years.

Zimbabwe has plenty to offer, with a cornucopia of minerals, including the world’s third-biggest platinum group metal reserves, and some of the best transport infrastructure in the region. Local ownership rules have been relaxed, as has a currency regime that hindered access to dollars. Few companies with a “rational level of risk appetite” will invest in the country in its current state, said Jee-A van der Linde, an economist at NKC African Economics.

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