When the leaders of COMESA’s 21 member States converge in Harare today, they will be doing more than signing communiqués.
They will be taking part in a nation-branding moment of rare power.
The 25th COMESA Summit, being held from today, October 22, under the theme “One Market, One Future: Advancing Inclusive Industrialisation, Investment and Regional Integration”, hands Zimbabwe the one-year chairmanship of a bloc of more than 640 million people.
For a destination, such a gathering is a global shop window.
Tourism brands are built on perception, trust and story, and few events concentrate those elements as efficiently as a summit that places a country at the centre of regional decision-making. Zimbabwe is not merely hosting; it is presenting itself.
Why a summit is a branding event
A destination brand is a promise made credible by experience, and a summit tests that promise in real time.
Delegates, journalists, investors and business travellers meet at the airports, hotels, restaurants, roads and people’s first-hand their stories, travel further than any advertising campaign.
Business tourism also carries a multiplier effect: it fills hotels, supports guides, restaurants, transport operators and craft markets and often converts first-time visitors into returning tourists and investors.
Foreign Affairs Minister Professor Amon Murwira has underlined the opportunity, noting that Zimbabwe’s 17 million people sit beside a COMESA market of over 640 million and that visa liberalisation and the removal of trade barriers could open that market to tourism operators.
Confidence, peace and an open door
On October 20, the launch of the “Creating Opportunities for Youth and Women in Africa (COYWA)” initiative at the Harare International Conference Centre captured the spirit of the moment: a continent investing in its young people and women, in a city ready to host them.
Investors and travellers read signals, and the signals from Harare are clear.
Peace, order and warm hospitality tell the world that Zimbabwe is open for business.
Credit is due to the Second Republic under President Mnangagwa, whose re-engagement and regional diplomacy, including his recent leadership of SADC, have restored confidence and returned Zimbabwe to the centre of Africa’s conversation.
Government has committed funding, training and the beautification of Harare, and has pledged to sustain these gains beyond the summit, so that the investment becomes a lasting tourism asset rather than a one-week display.
Ubuntu: The emotional core of the brand
Every enduring tourism brand rests on an emotional core, and Zimbabwe’s ubuntu: the philosophy that a person is a person through other people.
It is visible in the greeting at a hotel desk, the patience of a guide and the generosity of a host family.
Ubuntu cannot be manufactured by an advertising agency and that is precisely its strength. When delegates from twenty-one nations experience genuine welcome, they receive proof of the brand promise, and authenticity is the most persuasive currency in tourism.
Harare’s reputation as a friendly and safe capital will be reinforced by the courtesy of every taxi driver, hotelier and vendor who serves the summit.
Heritage values and living culture
Heritage gives the brand its depth. Great Zimbabwe, the stone-built capital of a medieval trading civilisation that gave the modern nation its name, testifies that Africans engineered, governed and traded long before colonial contact.
Alongside it stand Khami, the Matobo Hills with their ancient rock art, Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls) and Mana Pools.
These sites, together with living traditions such as the mbira, stone sculpture, dance and cuisine, form a heritage portfolio few destinations can match.
COMESA’s shared histories of trade, migration and culture create opportunities for joint heritage routes that place Zimbabwe within a wider African journey.
Identity for Africa and the question of coloniality
No African tourism brand can ignore coloniality. For generations, the continent was packaged for foreign eyes as wilderness, safari and exotic spectacle, with colonial names, discovery narratives and external ownership shaping what visitors saw and who profited.
Decolonising the brand means reversing that gaze. It means telling Zimbabwean stories in Zimbabwean voices, restoring indigenous names and meanings, and ensuring that communities, women and young entrepreneurs own and benefit from the tourism value chain.
The philosophy Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo, a “country is built by its owners”, is therefore, a branding principle as much as a political one.
A nation that defines itself cannot be defined by others.
Within the theme: “One Market, One Future”, this positions Africa as the author of its own story, and Africans as its first and most important tourists.
From moment to momentum
To convert the moment into momentum, Zimbabwe should act on several fronts. Tourism should be woven explicitly into the summit’s trade and integration agenda.
Delegates should be offered post-summit itineraries to Victoria Falls, Great Zimbabwe and Hwange.
Digital content created during the week should circulate under one consistent brand narrative.
Visa facilitation and service standards should be advanced through the chairmanship and initiatives such as COYWA should place youth and women at the heart of hospitality, crafts and guiding enterprises.
Consistency after the delegates depart will determine whether perception becomes reputation.
Conclusion
The COMESA Summit is a rare alignment of opportunity and readiness. Zimbabwe offers peace, hospitality rooted in ubuntu, a heritage reaching back centuries and a confident posture of openness under the Second Republic.
By telling its story on its own terms, free from colonial framings, the country can turn a diplomatic occasion into a lasting tourism identity.
One market, one future: Zimbabwe is ready to welcome Africa, and the world.
Charles Mavhunga is a Zimbabwean scholar, author, and cultural ambassador pursuing a PhD in Management at Bindura University of Science Education. He is the author of Mbira Virtuosos: Stories of Zimbabwean Mbira Legends (available on Amazon) and co-author of Business Enterprising Skills (Forms 1–4), published by Gramsol Books, Harare, and approved by Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. /A recognised Global Cultural Ambassador and member of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), he contributes weekly to The Herald, where he has published over 300 articles on tourism branding. He can be reached at charles.mavhunga@ gmail.com or +263 772 989 816.-herald
