Three years ago or so, I was invited to Zimbabwe to speak on the subject of Fraud Management by the Institute of Chartered Accountants at their winter school in Vic Falls.
I decided to make the trip by road electing to turn the invitation into an adventure.
As that wise saying goes, many a road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Zimbabwe three or four years ago was a wasteland if you ventured into the country by road.
I took the trip in a Nissan 4x4 Double Cab stockpiled with jerry cans of extra fuel that simply wasn’t enough to get me from Pretoria, through Musina, Bulawayo, on to Hwange and finally Vic Falls.
I made the mistake of offering to pay a local familiar with conditions on the ground I found in South Africa to drive my wife and I as far as Bulawayo, where I would leave them with their family and pick them up on the way back.
Our “local” had two things against him, if you discount his personality, I was to discover.
The first was the fact that he only had one eye, and the other, he couldn’t add.
On a road trip where the fact that a country is in the grips of a total economic meltdown can prove reckless and just mildly inconvenient when the consequence of economic meltdown is a complete lack of fuel or food on the shelves.
Hurtling through the night on ill defined and crumbling roads driven by a one eyed Kamikazi pilot is also not as fun or exiting as one might expect.
The fact that he was from Bulawayo and miscalculated the distance from Bulawayo to Vic Falls by 600 kilometres round trip didn’t help?
Zimbabwe at the time was a ghost country.
We travelled for hours without seeing another car in any direction.
We solved the fuel issue by finding black marketeers that sold us fuel for an extortionate R12 a litre?
Vic Falls, which is what this is about, at the time, was a town in the grips of starvation.
It was heartbreaking to witness the coal face of Zimbabwe’s failed policies.
Last week I once again made the trip to Vic Falls to lecture but without the David Livingstone spirit, I flew.
What struck me was the fact that my flight was packed.
So was the sleepy town of Vic Falls.
The place was abuzz with visitors from the four corners of the globe, a veritable league of nations following the footsteps of that intrepid explorer of yonks ago and marvelling at the sights and sound of the great Zambezi River.
I was booked to stay at a place called a-Zambezi River Lodge, a mere kilometre or two from town on the banks of the Zambezi.
Unconvinced by the throngs of tourists any reservation I had about returning to Vic Falls was dispelled.
a-Zambezi River Lodge turned out to be a hidden gem, revamped at a cost of R40 million it is a destination of note and judging from the number of guests at dinner, a not very well kept secret.
Maybe the Government of National Unity isn’t working but someone forgot to tell Vic Falls that?
Well apart from the more obvious, the thing that’s got me thinking is the state of ICT in the country but more specifically internet connectivity and cell phone coverage, signal quality and reliability.
There’s something to be said for enjoying free Wi-Fi access in the middle of the African bush.
Okay, let’s rethink complaining about bandwidth.
Connectivity in Zimbabwe is poor, very poor, although I’m sure Econet isn’t.
The question is where to now for Zimbabwe?
Judging by the patently obvious economic activity funded by cold hard tourist US $’s, the desperate need for spending in ICT for any economy that wants to be relevant, Zimbabwe is stirring.
Naturally the nationalisation debate still has investors spooked.
What can’t be ignored is the fact that our northern neighbour is starting to look viable again and that bodes well for the region.
The question isn’t whether Zimbabwe is or isn’t relevant given the existing climes.
The question is whether the Mugabe Regime is?
The fact is I’ve experienced enough seasons to know that they change and whether the Mugabe Regime is relevant or not, or will remain so if it still is doesn’t really matter.
The reality is that the digital age is here and its here to stay.
Zimbabwe has only one way to go and that’s up no matter what.
Having spent enough time in that country throughout its economic meltdown, the one sector begging for ICT, dripping with opportunity and pointing a more seductive beckoning finger at entrepreneurs than a hooker at a beer fest, its jolly old basket case Zim.
So if you have a bit of the David Livingstone in you, some spare cash and operate in the ICT space, open a little office in Harare and start looking around.
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