On 26th March 2021, ZAM and the Egyptian Embassy hosted a virtual meeting to discuss the ways in which Zambia and Egypt can improve in business cooperation. The Egyptian Embassy was represented by Mr. Mohammed Abdallah – Commercial Head and Ms. Lobna Essam – Deputy Commercial Head while ZAM was represented by Ms. Florence Muleya – ZAM CEO.
The Meeting was centered on increasing mutual cooperation between the two countries. The volume of trade between Zambia and Egypt stands at $16 million, of which $15 million is Egyptian trade and only $1 million is from Zambia. The aim is to increase mutual benefit between Zambia and Egypt by encouraging cooperation for a win-win position and creating more manufacturing opportunities between Zambia and Egypt. Through the concept of industrial integration by utilizing the potential and comparative advantages and creating job opportunities through manufacturing. For instance, increased investment by Egyptian companies like El Swedy which has invested in the country to utilize the local resource of copper to make transformers and supply to ZESCO.
To nonetheless increase trade, data and information of investment opportunities was key to make decisions. While many investors may want to find information and utilize it to make decisions, they find that the information is not readily available. So many questions of What market opportunities are available? And in which subsectors? Is missing. It would be good to cooperate and provide more information to highlight the opportunities, e.g., fact sheets, market briefs, matchmaking, joint ventures.
ZAM and the Egyptian Embassy agreed to arrange a webinar for members for trade opportunities, knowledge sharing and market expansion, to draft a concept note for the event to include officials from the Zambian Government as well as ZDA, assign a focal point for the activities and to formulate an MOU between the Egyptian Manufacturing Association and ZAM. The ZAM focal point assigned was Mr. Zondwayo Duma Policy Analyst.
The ZAM CEO explained that the Association was aggressively collecting information and churning it into usable pieces by would be information seekers. ZAM committed to ensure that they updated the website actively start providing sector briefs, market briefs, company briefs on the website and be a source of information for investors.
