President Robert Mugabe of the republic of Zimbabwe has challenged the business men in the COMESA region to emulate the attitude that Business women have, if their region is to record meaningful economic growth and development.
The Zimbabwean President said this when he addressed the COMESA Heads of State and government Summit at the Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort in Kampala, Uganda, on 23rd November 2012.
President Mugabe stressed that women world over have been associated with very caring hearts with a lot of passion to see growth in their endeavors especially when it comes to business.
He however took a swipe at businessmen in the COMESA region urging them to stop their lavish behavior every time they had made a lot of profits from their business ventures.
“I would like to urge you the business men in here to emulate our mothers when it comes to managing businesses. You should stop this attitude of show off to your friends because you want your friends to see who is driving the latest Mercedes Benz car, its not necessary and spending money on marrying too many women’, Mugabe said.
He urged the businessmen to instead continue investing in their businesses so that they can maximize on the profits giving of examples that women are always keen to see their businesses grow.
He said; “You should be like the women, they are so caring, they want to see growth in their business, the women work together so that they can make use of their strengths but for us men all we want to spend money aimlessly. We even forget that we have children to take to school. Some of our mothers took us to schools until we completed university, with the money they used to hide from our fathers”, he added.
He further said that COMESA should come up with programmes targeted at the Women Micro, Small and medium Scale entrepreneurs in order to foster their development in the various businesses they engage in.
President Mugabe also challenged men from the region and in the diaspora to come up with enterprises that will help foster economic development and job creation in the region instead of investing their knowledge and resources away from their homes.
“We have so many qualified engineers from this region but are based in various parts of the world working for big companies as if they can not work from here. Why cant they come back to the region and create companies that will create jobs for the youths, why cant they come back and contribute to the tax base in the region instead of these foreign companies getting almost half the money back to their soils?”, Mugabe questioned.
He said there is potential for the COMESA region to have the biggest companies run by the people from the region, which would ensure that the region does not export raw materials but instead add value and hence making the products cheaper.