Ramblings from Harare

It has taken me much longer than I had anticipated to blog. There are many reasons: work, family, social commitments, career development etc. So many things have happened. I left Ghana. I had a second child. We formed our own law firm. We formed the Zimbabwe Ghana Business Forum (ZGBF). It metamorphosed into the Zimbabwe International Business Forum (ZIBF). I am the Vice Chairperson. I convinced the Deputy Prime Minister to accompany us to Ghana. We did business. We were successful. I have basically summarised my life of the last nine months, time enough for a child to be conceived and born.

It has not all been easy. I did not expect it to be. Life is like that. But it was never impossible. It has always been achievable. It feels good to count your successes.

I have been forced to change my lifestyle drastically; to split my commitments between work, family, business initiatives and my own personal relaxation. I am very fond of relaxing, I think sometimes I am very lazy. Its all part of the game.

Zimbabwe is in winter now and temperatures have plummetted to below ten degrees at night and no more than twenty during day. July will be worse, we expect temperatures below five degrees at night and no more than fifteen during day. And the winds will pick up, howling across our stone cold faces day and night. Already our power untility, ZESA, is facing a tremendous challenge to keep us supplied with power. Fortunately for me, because I stay in town, we rarely have power cuts.

The country itself has been shaping up, slowly but with visible signs of progress. I was away in Accra when we hosted Brazil. I dont think this would have been possible five years ago. We now use the US Dollar (mostly) as our currency. You can also interchangeably use the Rand, Pula, Pound or Euro. Politically we may have lost a part of our sovereighnity, but economically we have made a stride. Inflation is now at 4%, projected to close the year at 6%. Our GDP is still rather low, infact rather embarrasing. Our Finance Minister tells us we are likely to formally generate as a country only 1,6 Billion US Dollars. At peak we hovered around five to six Billion. its still a steep climb. Unemployment is subsiding, no one was sure of the figures anymore, but our industrial wheels are slowly turning again.

We now have food in all supermarkets and stores. We now have adequate fuel. One of the Country's major projects, the construction of Joina City ( a 24 storey building in Harare) was completed two months ago. I hear they now want to pull down one of our very first malls, Ximex Mall, and replace it with an even taller building. Karigamombe Centre, where my offices are on the 14th Floor, used to be the tallest building in 1986 when it was completed. And then came the Reserve Bank building with 24 Floors. then there was the Trust towers. I dont think we were on the wrong path. All the other buildings in harare average fifteen floors.

These are just but my ramblings. Iam still here, and alive