Black Business Leader Brings African Leader to South Side

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by Lesley R. ChinnA local Black entrepreneur said he hopes an African leaders trip to the United States will be part of a mission to encourage more United States companies to do business in Zimbabwe.

Last Saturday, Dr. Willie Wilson introduced Zimbabwe Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Arthur Mutambara to numerous political, community, business and religious leaders during a reception in his honor at New Covenant M.B. Church, 77th and Cottage Grove.

Wilson said he met Dr. Mutambara when he went to Zimbabwe recently to discuss a possible business opportunity through his company, Omar Medical Supplies, Inc. The company, which is based in University Park, specializes in manufacturing three billion disposable gloves annually. Some of those products have been shipped to China and now he wants to do business in Zimbabwe. We just got a purchase order over there two weeks ago and we should be shipping a product out within the next 60 to 90 days. Were the only the company doing business in Zimbabwe, Wilson stated.

Relations between the United States and Zimbabwe have currently been strained over Western criticism of embattled President Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe also has a 95 percent unemployment rate, according to The Central Intelligence Agencys World Fact Book. That figure is about 10 times higher than the United States unemployment rate.

We need to go to [Zimbabwe] and create manufacturing [opportunities] to help create some jobs because the businesses over there have been taking money out of the community and not putting it back to create jobs, Wilson stated.

In February 2009, Dr. Mutambara emerged as Deputy Prime Minister following a power-sharing arrangement in September 2008 between the Movement for Democratic Change and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) that kept Mugabe as President and Morgan Tsvangirai as Prime Minister.

Mutambara, who is an Oxford University doctoral graduate, is no stranger to Chicago after having worked from 2001 to 2003 at a management consulting firm McKinsey & Company where he provided strategic advice to senior managers and business leaders of top companies in the United States in sectors that included manufacturing, technology, telecommunications, and agriculture.

Wilson invited former U.S. Congressman Mel Reynolds (D-2) to introduce Mutambara to make his keynote address before the public. In pointing out that there are 1.2 billion individuals of African descent worldwide, Mutambara stated that Well never be successful in Africa unless Africans in Chicago are doing well, Mutambara stated.

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