By Aldridge Dzvene
Zimbabwe’s hosting of the 19th COMESA Business Forum and Multi-Sectoral International Exhibition this month is positioning the country for a more commercially focused phase of regional integration, bringing local businesses face-to-face with buyers, investors, financiers and policymakers from across one of Africa’s largest trading blocs.
The forum, scheduled for 19 to 21 October 2026 in Harare on the margins of the 25th COMESA Heads of State and Government Summit, comes at a time when Zimbabwe is seeking to expand production, increase value addition and move beyond dependence on the export of primary commodities. The wider COMESA market represents more than 640 million people, with a combined gross domestic product of about US$1 trillion and merchandise trade exceeding US$383 billion, creating a significant market for companies capable of producing competitively and consistently.
The significance of the forum therefore goes beyond the exhibition of products. Its real economic value will be measured by whether Zimbabwean companies convert exposure into contracts, partnerships, investment and sustained access to regional supply chains.
The three-day programme will combine the COMESA Green Industries Connect, a high-level policy dialogue and a multi-sectoral international exhibition, with business-to-business and business-to-government engagements designed to connect companies directly with potential markets and decision-makers. Priority sectors include manufacturing, agriculture and agro-processing, the digital economy, financial services and fintech, mining, energy, textiles, leather products, tourism and hospitality.
This sector spread matters because Zimbabwe’s regional trade opportunity is no longer confined to traditional commodity exports.
The country has increasingly been seeking to strengthen domestic production and value addition, with merchandise exports reaching approximately US$9.71 billion in 2025, up from US$7.43 billion in 2024. Value-added exports also increased by 30.6 percent, from US$437 million to US$571 million, while building and construction material exports rose sharply from US$26.4 million to US$103.7 million.
These figures provide an important foundation for Zimbabwe’s COMESA proposition.
A regional market is most valuable when domestic production can respond to it. The challenge, therefore, is not simply finding buyers, but building companies capable of meeting international standards, maintaining quality, supplying agreed volumes and delivering consistently.
This is where the COMESA opportunity intersects with the country’s broader industrialisation agenda.
For Zimbabwean manufacturers, agriculture and agro-processing companies, mining suppliers and service providers, regional markets can provide the scale required to grow beyond a relatively limited domestic customer base. For smaller businesses, regional integration can also offer a more accessible first step into international trade before attempting to compete in distant markets.
The newsletter highlights the growing role of export clusters in this process, particularly among rural producers. In Midlands, producers of sugar snap and mange tout peas are being organised around production schedules and quality requirements for the United Kingdom market, while horticulture clusters are being developed around products including avocado, citrus, bananas, flowers, strawberries and spices. Similar support is being provided to banana, coffee, tea and avocado value chains in Honde Valley.
The implication is significant: export development can become an instrument of wider economic participation rather than an activity restricted to large corporations.
If production, aggregation, packaging, certification, logistics and processing expand alongside exports, the benefits of regional trade begin to spread through the domestic economy.
The COMESA forum also arrives as African countries continue to deepen continental trade integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area. The ZimTrade newsletter notes that the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative has expanded from eight pilot countries in 2022 to approximately 39 participating countries, while more than 40 African countries are issuing AfCFTA Certificates of Origin.
For Zimbabwe, this means the regional opportunity should be viewed as part of a much larger continental market strategy.
COMESA can provide the immediate regional platform, while AfCFTA provides the longer-term continental framework.
But the transition from opportunity to commercial reality will depend on competitiveness.
A company cannot build an export strategy around market access alone. It needs the capacity to produce at scale, comply with standards, understand customer requirements, price competitively, and manage logistics. The newsletter notes that more than 70 percent of surveyed Zimbabwean enterprises lacked international certification, highlighting one of the practical barriers that could prevent businesses from converting market access into actual exports.
The COMESA Business Forum therefore presents Zimbabwean businesses with both an opportunity and a test.
The opportunity is the size of the market and the concentration of buyers, investors, financiers and policymakers in Harare. The test is whether local companies arrive with commercially ready products, properly certified, competitively priced and capable of sustaining supply.
Zimbabwe’s next phase of export growth will ultimately depend on moving from market access to market capture.
Hosting COMESA gives the country the platform. The task for business is to convert that platform into orders, partnerships, investment, and stronger regional value chains.
That is where the economic significance of the October forum will ultimately be measured.
