Industries with Voids Entrepreneurs Need to Fill Up: Supply Chain, Tourism & Hospitality and Health care & Pharmaceuticals

• Supply Chain

A number of industries in Zimbabwe import raw materials from foreign countries such as South Africa and China. One sector to note is the paint manufacturing sector which has recently been reported of importing materials like asbestos, Barytes, calcite, chalk, dolomite, fluorite, galena, graphite, gypsum, jasper only to mention a few whilst we have them abundantly in Zimbabwe. Importation of these key resources has been attributed to lack of technology and proper equipment. A look back at home, worth mentioning mineral resources that are part of the paint manufacturing process are: Mica; found in Hurungwe, Rushinga, Kariba and Hwange, Oxides/Pigments and Silica Sands

Furthermore, from a 2020 survey done by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry stated that just one week after the start of the country’s 21-day lockdown due to Corona Virus, the organization said that around 88% of local companies were struggling to  procure raw materials, this is said to have reduced production and trade volumes by 36%.

Zimbabwe also imports Plastics and articles thereof and Articles of iron or steel worth millions of dollars. However, the availability of Petalite and clay in Zimbabwe, makes her have the capacity to locally produce more plastic. Let us not talk about iron and steel.

• Tourism and Hospitality

n 2018, Africa had a global share of 80% in the tourism sector, that’s a lot. The tourism and hospitality sector comes with a few voids, but a lot of opportunities. Some of the opportunities being in rural tourism, accommodation, travel agency, food outlets, car hiring only to mention a few. These opportunities seem to have some dominant players in it however, the cake is still big to share.

The Zimbabwean Rural Tourism to some extent has some voids, it lacks marketing agencies and or partners to promote it. To add on, the Tourism and Hospitality sector creates a vast of opportunities for SMEs operating within their spheres of influence. These small players are being reported to fail to expand mainly due to lack of financial resources. Some of these small projects include crafts, poultry, cooking and carpentry.

• Health care and Pharmaceuticals

The Health care and Pharmaceuticals Sector is one of the most critical service in the globe, whilst Zimbabwe has a compromised one full of voids entrepreneurs can monetize from. Within the health care and pharmaceuticals sector of Zimbabwe, not all people have access and can afford sanitary wear, descent health care services and critical drugs patients would have been prescribed for. Whilst we have some private players within the sector we still lose a lot from importation of Medicaments.

During the 2018-2019 period all the Pharmaceuticals imports amounted to $206.6Million.

Though there are reports of an unbalanced play field between the local and international pharmaceuticals manufacturers, there are still opportunities local entrepreneurs can go for.