Building an Export Culture in a Mono-Currency Environment
I am a realist. A mono-currency system is coming—sooner rather than later.
But as we move in that direction, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe must understand why I shifted my capital into gold production—and why export incentives matter.
Without them, we risk reversing the hard-won gains of our export sectors.
In the 90s, I farmed for local markets. But I quickly learned a hard truth: without access to foreign currency, growth is capped. The Export Retention Scheme (ERS) that the Reserve Bank had at the time changed that. It gave exporters control—and that control created incentives.
That is what pushed me into tobacco and paprika.
Later, when I lost my farms, I shifted again—this time into mining. Not by choice, but by necessity. I needed a reliable, self-controlled source of foreign currency.
After trial and error, I built a mine in Kadoma that funded my imports and growth.
That experience taught me one thing:
control over foreign currency is not a luxury—it is the foundation of scale.
I have reinvested everything into Zimbabwe. I have no other home.
But I need the freedom to:
•generate my own foreign currency
•retain it
•deploy it as I see fit
I am willing to sell what I don’t need—to the market and to the central bank. But that must be a choice, not a compulsion.
Because local producers cannot compete on unequal terms with multinationals who:
•freely repatriate capital
•move dividends without restriction
•access global funding at scale
If we are serious about building an export-led economy, we must reward those who earn foreign currency—not constrain them.
Incentives build exporters.
Restrictions destroy them. This reassurance is missing in the current messaging on mono currency. I request the Reserve Bank to kindly review its messaging so as to give confidence to exporters and the diaspora population that sends money home to support our economy.
Dambudziko renyu kufunga kuti Ellen G White ndiye akatirambidza kudya pork😂😂
Imboverengai Leviticus 11.
The Bible specifically never calls pork "food" for humans; it categorizes it as an unclean animal
A major problem we face in Zimbabwe is financial literacy. I see Zimloan gives out loans for 14 days at 20%, and also deducts a 10% admin fee from the principal. Excluding the horrendous bank charges and cash-out fees, which are material and should not be excluded, anyone taking a loan under these conditions is instantly, and probably permanently, condemning themselves to financial hell.
That's almost a 1000% annualised interest rate, and if you take compounding into effect the numbers balloon into the truly ridiculous. I always thought in the back of my mind there was a law against usury but it seems not in Zimbabwe.
In SA the rate above which the loan is considered usurious is 29%. How are guys charging nearly 1000% here and getting away with it?
Why are people taking loans at these rates? No legal enterprise returns funds sufficient to cover this. Colombian drug lords could not afford these interest rates.
Do not borrow at these rates. Even in Zig.