A series of surveys were undertaken by ZimTrade in the Mozambique and Angola markets, where opportunities were discovered in sectors such as clothing and textiles, agriculture inputs and implements, processed foods and mining supplies among others. As a follow up to these surveys, local companies were facilitated to participate in trade fairs and missions to exploit the identified market opportunities.
Over 100 local companies were facilitated to participate in missions and trade fairs in Mozambique from 2012 to 2018, where total business generated from these is well in excess of USD20 million.
The feedback generated from local companies that participated in the Mozambique missions and trade fairs showed that more business could be generated if communication challenges between the 2 markets were addressed. It was further pointed out by exporters that the cost of translating documents as well as the time taken to engage reliable interpreters was a long and costly process.
Given this feedback, ZimTrade facilitated Portuguese language lessons for 22 company representatives from Harare and Bulawayo. The main objective of this initiative was to create seamless communication between Zimbabwean exporters and potential Portuguese-speaking buyers. Participants were taken through a rigorous set of lessons that took place over a period of one month. The lessons were conducted daily to enable the participants to grasp as many basic concepts of the language as possible.
Participants welcomed the idea of learning a new language and indicated that the novel initiative taken by ZimTrade, was another way of facilitating exporters to access export markets in a practical way. ZimTrade was also encouraged to facilitate companies to learn other languages such as French to assist companies looking to penetrate French-speaking export markets such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Publish Date: Tuesday 30 April 2019
