MILLS and HERBST: Zimbabwe after Mugabe - a way forward
'The onus will be on new leadership to make difficult but better economic policy choices'
Can Zimbabwe recover when Robert Mugabe leaves? The damage done over the past 37 years of unbroken power to the economy by Mugabe, 93, and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) party is considerable. The onus will be on new leadership to make difficult but better economic policy choices. Such decisions matter immensely. Compare, for example, Zimbabwe to Costa Rica, which in the mid-1980s had stop payments on its debt due to a severe economic slump, and was in a neighbourhood where there were three ongoing civil wars. Instead of succumbing to these barriers, Costa Rica has grown its economy five times in the last three decades. The shock of the mid-1980s encouraged Costa Rica’s leadership to do things differently. Instead of relying on its traditional agricultural exports, it diversified by attracting new industries. The trickle quickly turned to a flood with the arrival of Intel in 1997. Thirty years ago two-thirds of its exports were agricultural goods. Now it exports ...
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