Haritatos Turns ZITF 2026 Into Blueprint For Rural Transformation
By late morning at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) grounds in Bulawayo, the crowds had thinned just enough to walk. Yet one corridor was still busy. At its centre, moving from stand to stand with a notebook in hand and a small team in tow, was the new Minister of Lands and Rural Development, Honourable Vangelis Peter Haritatos.
He wasn’t there for the photographs. He was there for the wiring — the invisible connections that must link land to water, water to roads, roads to clinics and schools, and, ultimately, all of it to a better life for the rural majority.
On Day 4 of ZITF 2026, that intent came into sharp focus. Stand by stand, conversation by conversation, Haritatos used Zimbabwe’s biggest trade showcase to stress-test a simple but ambitious idea: that rural development in Zimbabwe must become one coordinated story, not a collection of scattered projects.
From Land To Livelihoods: A New Ministry Steps Out
The tour marked one of the first major public outings of the newly configured Ministry of Lands and Rural Development, which now carries some of the heaviest responsibilities in Government: land administration and tenure, rural infrastructure, and the coordination of State efforts in villages across the country.
It’s a portfolio that touches millions of lives. As the Minister put it at the close of the visit, this isn’t a technical ministry on the fringes of policy debates — it’s at the heart of Zimbabwe’s social contract.
“Fantastic day. You know, our ministry is so important and critical for the future of our country,” Hon. Haritatos said in an interview after leaving the exhibition halls. “Our ministry, the new Ministry of Lands and Rural Development, talks to each and every one in this beautiful country.”
Behind the political language sits a very practical reality. Under Haritatos’s stewardship lies the land people live on, the title under which they hold it, the water that flows through their fields, the roads that carry their harvests, the clinics that heal them, the schools that shape their children, and the electricity that lights their homes.
At ZITF 2026, he set out to see how those pieces can be made to move together.
Why Rural Development Is Bigger Than Agriculture
The Minister’s programme for the day read like a directory of Zimbabwe’s rural transformation architecture. He walked through the stands of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA), the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA), the Zimbabwe Lands Commission (ZLC), the Land Tenure Committee, the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), and private sector players like Bison.
At each stop, he went beyond greetings. Staff were drawn into short, sometimes intense conversations — about bottlenecks, technology gaps, financing models, and how to get services to the last village, not just the last growth point.
Yet it was when the conversation turned from land alone to the broader idea of rural life that Haritatos’s tone shifted.
“Our rural development is not agriculture rural development; it’s rural development coordination,” he explained. “Which means that it can be agriculture, it can be water, it can be road infrastructure, bridges, for example. It can be clinics, it can be schools, it can be electricity.”
For farmers reading this in Gokwe, Hurungwe, Lupane or Buhera, that distinction matters. It means that the Ministry doesn’t see a new borehole as enough if the nearby clinic has no power. It doesn’t celebrate a new dip tank while the access road is still a muddy trap. Agriculture is the foundation, but the Ministry’s ambitions now stretch to the full village ecosystem.
FFA Explainer:
When officials talk about “rural development coordination”, they mean getting all the different Government departments and agencies to plan and act together in one area. Instead of one ministry drilling a borehole this year and another building a classroom five years later, the aim is to bring water, roads, electricity, schools, clinics, and economic projects in a single, planned package.
Land Tenure, Trust, And The Administrative Spine
Any serious conversation about rural development in Zimbabwe eventually comes back to land tenure — who holds land, on what terms, and with what security. Haritatos did not avoid that sensitive terrain.
Under the Lands umbrella, he made a deliberate stop at the Land Tenure Committee and the Zimbabwe Lands Commission. His message there was less about ticking boxes and more about understanding from the ground up.
“We spoke to a few people to understand any challenges that they have and also to share ideas, because it’s a new ministry, so we must come in with new ideas, new vision,” he said.
The aim, he suggested, is an administration that’s more responsive and modern — one that supports investment and productivity while ensuring fairness.
For smallholders in Masvingo or Mashonaland East, that responsiveness is not an abstract principle. It’s the difference between waiting years for a piece of paper confirming your right to farm, and getting a clear, bankable document in time to plant or to secure inputs. It’s about converting land from a political promise into a practical asset.
In recent years, reforms around offer letters and 99-year leases have tried to move in that direction. The Zimbabwe Lands Commission has been tasked with audits and dispute resolution, while tenure reform processes continue. How quickly and fairly those instruments work in Murehwa, Mbire or Matobo will be one of the quiet tests of this new Ministry.
Rural Industrialisation: The Missing Link Comes Into Focus
If land and water are the roots, rural industry is the trunk. This is where the Minister’s tour took a surprising turn — even for his own team.
Haritatos revealed that his understanding of the Rural Industrialisation Agency (RIA) deepened significantly during the ZITF engagement.
“Like, for example, under RIA, I didn’t know maybe three-quarters of the things that they taught us today. And I really got a serious appreciation,” he admitted. As the team walked him through their projects and ambitions, he said he could “immediately see the links” between RIA’s industrial push in the rural areas and the broader coordination role of his Ministry.
Those links matter more than ever. Rural industrialisation is what turns a maize field into a milling business, a cotton plot into a textiles opportunity, or a goat herd into a branded meat and leather enterprise. It’s what stops young people from leaving Uzumba for Harare or Johannesburg because there’s “nothing to do” at home.
FFA Explainer:
Rural industrialisation means setting up processing and value addition businesses in the countryside instead of only in cities. For example, a peanut butter factory in Gokwe, a solar-powered cold room in Binga, or a small fertiliser blending plant in Chiredzi. This keeps more value — and more jobs — in rural communities.
Already, agencies like ARDA have been experimenting with Village Business Units that try to ground such activity at ward level. The challenge now is scale and integration: ensuring those units are served by reliable power from REA, affordable water from ZINWA, and financial products from institutions like AFC that fit seasonal farming realities.
One Village, One Arrival: A New Coordination Drive
This is where Haritatos’s rural coordination vision becomes most concrete. Speaking after his tour, he outlined a plan for a focused inter-ministerial push in the coming weeks and months.
“Our job now in the coming weeks is really to coordinate all the line ministries together so that we ensure that we do as much rural development — that when we get into a village, we don’t only do water and a Village Business Unit, but we ensure that our clinics are improved, we ensure that our schools are improved, we ensure those schools are electrified, we ensure the road infrastructure,” he said.
Picture, for example, a ward in Gutu District. Under the old model, a borehole might arrive this year, a classroom block three years later, a solar mini-grid perhaps never. Under the coordination model the Minister is pushing, the Government would enter that ward with a package: water, a rehabilitated clinic, an electrified school, a functioning business hub, and a clearly graded road — all planned together.
For farmers, that’s more than a pretty concept. A reliable road can mean getting tomatoes to Mbare Musika before they rot. A clinic with medicines can mean a sick child is treated quickly, not after a two-day trip. An electrified school can mean children reading at night and accessing digital learning. And when all that happens in one sweep, confidence grows. So does productivity.
National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) talks about “leaving no place and no one behind.” In practical terms, Haritatos is attempting to translate that into a rural service arrival model that can be seen, measured, and felt at village level.
Vision 2030, Agenda 2063, And The Village Front Line
Throughout the day, the Minister kept circling back to a familiar national compass: President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa’s Vision 2030, which aims to transform Zimbabwe into an upper middle-income society by the start of the next decade.
“Our ministry is one ministry, but we will be working with all line ministries to make sure that President E.D. Mnangagwa’s Vision 2030 of uplifting the livelihoods of each and every Zimbabwean is truly, truly fulfilled,” he said.
On paper, Vision 2030 aligns with AU Agenda 2063 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In practice, it will live or die in places like Nkayi, Chipinge, and Muzarabani — where women still walk long distances for water, and where youth still wrestle with the decision to stay or to leave.
The ZITF 2026 theme, “Connected Economies, Competitive Industries”, fits uncomfortably well into this story. A truly connected Zimbabwean economy cannot be built on islands of urban prosperity surrounded by seas of rural deprivation. Competitiveness will have to include smallholders and village-based enterprises that are linked to markets, technology, and skills.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has long argued that rural development is central to food security and inclusive growth, particularly when women and youth are at the centre. The test for Zimbabwe’s new Ministry will be how effectively it brings those groups into decision-making — from ward committees to provincial planning boards — and how clearly it translates big visions into farm-gate realities.
Zimbabwe Anchor: What This Could Mean For A Village In Mwenezi
To understand the stakes, imagine a village in Mwenezi, where a group of women already runs a small goat project, supplying local butcheries with live animals. Right now, they probably rely on a sandy road, an unreliable borehole, and a village dip tank that sometimes runs dry.
Under the Haritatos model, when Government “arrives” in that village, several things would be coordinated:
- ZINWA and local authorities ensuring reliable water for both households and livestock.
- REA or private partners extending power — grid or solar — to the business site.
- ARDA or another agency helping the women formalise a Village Business Unit, with simple processing like meat cutting or drying.
- AFC or another financier structuring seasonal lines of credit tailored to their cash flows.
- The Ministry of Health ensuring the clinic is staffed and stocked, so illness doesn’t wipe out labour during peak seasons.
- The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education upgrading and electrifying the local school, opening doors for digital learning for their children.
On its own, none of these actions is new. But when done together, in a single, visible push, they start to change how a community plans, invests, and dreams. Rural transformation moves from rhetoric to reality.
Village Business Units and similar concepts are already being piloted in parts of Zimbabwe. The new Ministry’s coordination role offers a chance to consolidate those gains and avoid the repetition of past mistakes, where boreholes broke down for lack of spare parts, or where electrification arrived years before any productive use.
From Backdrop To Choreographer
By the time Hon. Haritatos wrapped up his ZITF 2026 tour, a pattern had emerged. The Ministry of Lands and Rural Development does not intend to remain a quiet administrative machine in the background of Zimbabwe’s growth story.
Under its new leadership, it’s trying to become the choreographer — bringing every line ministry, every agency, every district, and every village into the same rhythm of planning and delivery.
This won’t be simple. Coordinating ministries with their own budgets, priorities, and political constituencies is notoriously difficult. There will be turf battles, capacity gaps, and villages that still get missed. [SOURCE REQUIRED: evaluation of past inter-ministerial coordination efforts in Zimbabwe]
Yet something important did happen on that Bulawayo morning. A Minister with one of the country’s most sensitive and strategic portfolios walked the exhibition halls not as a spectator but as a connector — asking where the pipes meet the policies, where the cables meet the classroom, where the land records meet the lives.
If that spirit carries beyond ZITF, then somewhere in rural Zimbabwe — perhaps in a village in Mwenezi, or a ward in Lupane, or a resettlement area in Mazowe — the next Government convoy that arrives may bring not just one project, but a full, coordinated story.
And when the sun rises over that village the morning after, lighting up a newly powered clinic, an active business hub, and a classroom where children can study into the evening, it will be a small but significant step towards what the Minister called the “full picture of rural development”. One village at a time.
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