Portuguese quick service restaurant, Chicken Hut is partnering with other firms in the region to promote visitors to Zimbabwe and explore opportunities presented by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The AfCFTA, which was operationalised in January 2021 seeks to streamline customs procedures, reduce bureaucracy, and harmonise technical standards to ease the movement of goods across the continent's borders.
Under the AfCFTA agreement to which Zimbabwe is signatory, the continent also seeks to eliminate tariffs on 90 percent of goods traded between member States over a 10-year period.
In this context, the objective is to foster regional economic integration and boost intra-African trade by 53 percent by next year with the potential to create up to 30 million new jobs and lift 30 million people out of poverty.
In light of the projected growth in volume of trade and human traffic due to the AfCFTA agreement, Chicken Hut is partnering with various regional companies to foster travel into Zimbabwe through Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare.
Some of the partners include Airlink and Carsafe National Airfreight, which gives travellers one-hour free parking for every family combo meal bought at Chicken Hut's airport branch. This is centred on promoting travel into Harare in line with the rise of intra-Africa travel under the AfCFTA.
Chicken Hut marketing director Ms Celia Mhlanga said: "Chicken Hut wants to be aligned with the new Africa where we are a single market.
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"As a brand that has a huge following with over 100 000 followers on social media across platforms, we want to drive a campaign to have more people in the region coming to explore our capital city.
"We are working with airlines such as Airlink that cover most of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and part of Comesa (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa), with a view to bringing people to experience our capital city.
"We will be bringing influencers from various countries for Harare familiarisation tours, which we believe will raise awareness of our brand in the region and at the same time grow Zimbabwe's tourism sector at large," she said.
In July this year, as a result of fostering the objectives of the AfCFTA, the East African Community, SADC and Comesa signed a tripartite agreement, which combines the three regional economic blocs, creating a market that consists of 29 member states with over 60 percent of Africa's Gross Domestic Product and a population of 800 million people.
