Tourism outperforms all sectors in GDP contributions

The country’s tourism sector has overtaken agriculture and mining as the major contributor to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister, Barbara Rwodzi.

The Zimbabwean economy is anchored by agriculture that contributes about 19 percent to GDP and supplies 60 percent of industrial raw materials and mining which includes gold, platinum, nickel, and lithium.

Other sectors lean on the two sectors for raw materials to power Zimbabwe’s economy, ranked among the fastest-growing economies in Southern Africa, with growth rates of 6.1 percent in 2022 and 5.3 percent in 2023.

Launching the Domestic Tourism Festive Season Travel Campaign at the Mazowe Dam Resort on the outskirts of Harare in Mashonaland Central on Saturday, Rwodzi said because of the drought that affected the 2023/2024 farming season and the poor metal prices obtaining on the world market, agriculture and mining sectors performed poorly.

Unlike in the past when agriculture and mining outstripped other sectors, tourism this year is so far leading in GDB contribution.

She said the tourism sector has in the process also surpassed its target of becoming a US$5 billion industry by 2025 in line with the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) and Vision 2030.

“Our President (Emmerson Mnangagwa) because he is clever, realised that climate change is playing havoc with the biggest contributor to his economy, agriculture; while metals prices could no longer be relied on because of the fluctuating prices,” said Rwodzi.

“The country could not depend on that because in places such as Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Oman, they depended for years on their oil, that’s mining but now they are anchoring (their economies) on their tourism,” she said.

“So, the President decided to also create his own ministry that focused on tourism. We worked hard and exactly one year after being assigned this duty, we are the biggest contributor to the Zimbabwean GDP.”

The country also turned to its land, water, food and farming and introduced pfumvudza/intwasa, a concept which is also contributing to tourism as people are visiting the country to study the concept.

She appealed to Zimbabweans to desist from traveling to foreign countries in search of fine food and wine and prioritise local tourist destinations when they get their bonuses at the end of the year.

As part of the strategy to ensure the sector leaves no place and no one behind, Rwodzi said her ministry was clustering the tourism sector into sports, medical, religious tourism and cultural tourism.Watch live sports online

The First Lady, Amai Auxilia Mnangagwa, who is the Tourism and Hospitality Industry ministry patron, introduced gastronomy tourism which is helping Zimbabwe improve its tourism cake.

“We are now taking traditional cuisines such as madora and goat innards (zvinyenze) to different fora and exhibitions where the food is wooing large numbers seeking to taste it. We were in London last week, large numbers of white people queued for Zvinyenze, seven days which we are preparing and packaging together with super chibuku for those that prefer lighter traditional brews because these are our local products.

Our strategy is heritage-based tourism. Our heritage drives tourism.”