Category :News This Week

To appreciate the shift that has taken place in the Zimbabwean tobacco industry over the past decade, consider these figures: In 2000, approximately 4,000 growers sold 240 million kg. This year, the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association is expecting sales Read More

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Auctioning of leaf at the Tobacco Sales Floors in Harare this morningRead More

I was surprised to run into Patrick Rose at Northern Tobacco in Harare. I had met Patrick several years ago when he was looking after BAT’s leaf growing operations in Uganda, and he seemed Read More

I visited the Tobacco Sales Floors this morning, interviewed Greg McDonald at Inter-Continental Leaf and caught up with Dr. Andrew Matibiri at the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, who introduced me to Rudo Boka. Rudo Read More

“The devil shits Dutchmen,” complained Sir William Batten in 1667 as he watched the English fleet burning in the Thames estuary. The famous British naval administrator was exasperated by Dutch challenges to English rule in the Read More

In addition to the rising cost of production, unclear property rights and limited access to capital, the tobacco grower I visited this morning had to deal with another challenge recently—witchcraft. After several of his Read More

After visiting a commercial tobacco farm and several leaf merchants, the story that emerges is as follows: Zimbabwe tobacco production used to be dominated by a small number of large-scale tobacco farmers. The majority of Read More

I had dinner with three fellow guests at York Lodge—a Belgian diamond trader, a Brazilian AIDS consultant and a member of the Danish embassy in Zambia. The diamond trader was in Zimbabwe to help Read More

I met John Robertson today, a local economist whom I have always admired for his common sense and willingness to speak truth to power. He said the game changer in Zimbabwe has been the “dollarization” Read More