SHANNISE DZOBO
MASVINGO – Masvingo City Council (MCC) is amongst twelve local authorities across Zimbabwe selected by Gender Links Zimbabwe (GLZ) to participate in a gender inclusive economic development programme.
GLZ in partnership with the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works is implementing the ‘Promoting Gender Inclusive Local Economic Development programme’.
The programme is focusing on five thematic areas which are arts and crafts, clean energy, health and sanitation, hoticulture and waste management.
Masvingo City Council, Manyame Rural District Council (RDC), Makoni RDC, Umguza RDC and Mutare City Council are going to be majoring on hoticulture, Norton Town Council is going to be doing fish farming, Murewa RDC, Beitbridge Municipality and Kadoma City Council will be focusing on waste management, Kariba Council will be focusing of health and sanitation, Bulawayo City Council with be doing Arts and Crafts and Zibagwe RDC will be doing Renewable Energy.
Priscilla Maphosa, GLZ regional manager told The Midweek Watch that they are implementing this programme in 12 local authorities responding to national priorities that contribute to Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030 which aims to foster inclusive economic growth and address poverty by 2030 and National Development Strategy 1 (2021-2024) whose overarching goal is to ensure high, accelerated, inclusive and sustainable economic growth.
Roseline Masunungure the senior enterprise development officer for GLZ said they are hosting training workshops for targeted participants in different selected local authorities to enhance life skills and entrepreneurship.
“In all the selected projects that are going to be done across the country in the selected local authorities we are targeting mainly women (50%), youths (30%) and male adults(20%) because women need to be very much involved in the economic empowerment programmes as they are the backbone of the family set up in the country,” said Masunungure.
“The programme will focus on entrepreneurship training and infrastructure development ensuring that women and youth have access to local economic opportunities including access to finance, markets and learning and sharing platforms and by this it also seeks to build the capacity of the 12 local authorities to ensure that they support women-owned enterprises on procurement processes”.
Alice Mashingaidze the MCC gender focal person said that the they are grateful for being selected for such an economic empowerment opportunity because it uplifts women, youths and people living with disability as well.
“MCC is really excited to have been selected for this initiative because it is going to uplift the lives of women and youths mostly by involving them in economic developments projects in the city.
“Also exposing them to opportunities which include access to finance, markets and to ensure that they build women-owned enterprises,” said Mashingaidze.
“As a council we are going to provide land, water and other accessories since we are going to be focusing on horticulture project doing floriculture to export outside our country because we have other participants who were involved in floriculture selling roses to Holland therefore it is going to be easier for us to navigate through since we have experts in the business already.
“We have also involved events planners, landscapers and Masvingo Poly students of Floticulture so that we have a lot of expertise in the project,” she added.
