By Gamuchirai Tsokota
Bilateral relations between Zimbabwe and Belarus continues to strengthen with the opening of Belarusian embassy in Harare.
The decision to open an embassy in Harare was outlined in the Minsk` council of minister’s resolution number 477 recently.
Bilateral relations between the Republic of Zimbabwe and the Republic of Belarus are not a new phenomenon as they started in 1992 with the Ambassador of Belarus to South Africa being accredited to Zimbabwe concurrently.
However, relations only started to deepen in 2015 after the visit by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to Belarus, who was by then the vice president of Zimbabwe. This was followed by the visit of Belarus’s head of presidential administrations property management department Viktar Sheiman to Zimbabwe.
Following the visit the two countries signed a number of contracts which were worth $58 million dollars with the biggest chunk of the share being dedicated to agricultural machinery and spare parts as reported by Tut.by 2018.
In 2018 Sheiman declared that cooperation in several sectors can boost the Belarusian -Zimbabwe economic relations with their eyes on the extraction of mineral resources, construction of industrial and residential buildings, exportation of agricultural equipment and exportation of Belarusian fertilisers.
The two countries went on to discuss the possibility of assembling and production of Belarussian agricultural in Zimbabwe. As of mid-2018 about five companies with Belarus capital operated in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe also signed a tripartite deal with Belarus and China a deal that was duped to put Zimbabwe at the center of the regional transport and logistics hub.
The Herald in 2018 reported that Zimbabwe had signed an “advanced a grand infrastructure scheme that could make Zimbabwe a regional transport and logistics hub.” The scheme was targeted at being to link Indian and Atlantic oceans, the idea also required the participation of several other Sub Saharan countries but with Zimbabwe being at the central element.
This is one of the deals that we expect to manifest during the tenure of the incoming ambassador of the republic of Belarus to Zimbabwe.
