By Engineer Jacob Kudzayi Mutisi
Zimbabwe cannot build a modern industrial economy by endlessly holding conferences, workshops and indabas where engineers, academics, businesspeople and policymakers produce recommendations that are then forgotten.
The country does not suffer from a shortage of ideas. It suffers from a shortage of implementation. For decades, Zimbabweans have gathered in conference and congress rooms to discuss industrialisation, infrastructure, energy, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, education and economic development. Reports are produced, recommendations are made and resolutions are adopted. Yet years later, many of the same problems remain.
What is the purpose of another conference if the recommendations from the previous one have not been implemented? Japan and China offer Zimbabwe an important lesson. Their transformation was not achieved through conferences and congress alone. Engineering knowledge was connected to industrial policy, investment, manufacturing, research, technical education and most importantly implementation.
Japan’s post-war industrial development involved close coordination between government, industry, research and technical expertise. China has similarly invested heavily in engineering, technical education, research and industrial capacity as part of its economic transformation.
Zimbabwe needs to adopt a similar culture of execution. Instead of spending scarce public resources repeatedly bringing people together to discuss the same problems, government should establish a system where every major national conference produces an implementation matrix.
Every recommendation should have:
* a responsible ministry or institution;
* a named person accountable for implementation;
* a budget;
* a deadline;
* measurable targets; and
* a mechanism for publicly reporting progress.
If a recommendation cannot be implemented, government should explain why. If it requires legislation, Parliament should be told.If it requires funding, the Treasury should identify the financing gap. If it requires engineering expertise, engineers should be assigned to the project. If it requires private-sector participation, government should create the framework for business to participate.
And if a recommendation has already been made at a previous conference, there should be no justification for spending money to discuss the same issue again.
This is where engineers have an important role. Engineers are trained to move from a problem to a solution. They design, calculate, test, build, commission and evaluate. National development needs precisely this culture.
Zimbabwe should move from a conference culture to an implementation culture. Imagine if every major infrastructure or industrialisation conference was followed by a national engineering delivery programme. Engineers could take the resolutions and turn them into projects with designs, specifications, bills of quantities, procurement plans, construction schedules and performance measurements.
The success of the conference would then not be measured by the number of delegates who attended or the number of speeches delivered. It would be measured by what was built afterwards.
A conference discussing electricity is meaningless if electricity generation does not increase. A conference discussing water is meaningless if communities continue without reliable water. A conference discussing manufacturing is meaningless if factories remain closed. A conference discussing agricultural productivity is meaningless if farmers continue importing basic inputs and food.
“What changed because we held this conference?” If the answer is nothing, perhaps the next conference should not be held.
The money could instead be directed towards implementation building laboratories, repairing technical colleges, purchasing equipment, financing prototypes, supporting local manufacturers, upgrading infrastructure or funding engineering projects.
We should also create a National Register of Government Conference Recommendations. Every recommendation made at a government-sponsored conference should be recorded and tracked publicly. Zimbabweans should be able to see which recommendations were accepted, which were rejected, who is responsible and what progress has been made.
This would introduce accountability into the conference system. The objective should not be to stop Zimbabweans from meeting and exchanging ideas. Conferences and congresses have an important role in bringing expertise together. The problem is holding meetings without converting knowledge into action.
Zimbabwe has enough strategies. It has enough resolutions. It has enough reports.It has enough speeches. What Zimbabwe needs now is execution.
If we genuinely want to learn from Japan and China, we should not copy the number of conferences they hold. We should learn how they connected technical knowledge, engineering, industrial policy, investment and implementation to national development.
The time has come for Zimbabwe to stop celebrating the conference itself and start celebrating the factory that was built, the power station commissioned, the road completed, the water system delivered, the product manufactured and the problem solved.
Let engineers take the recommendations from the conference room and turn them into reality.