Yeukai Tazira and Lynn Munjanja
THE Zimbabwe Agricultural Society (ZAS) has moved forward this year’s agricultural show dates by a week to accommodate both national and international stakeholders. Addressing the media yesterday, ZAS chief executive officer Dr Anxious Masuka said the re-branded Zimbabwe Agricultural Show, formerly Harare Agricultural Show, will now be held from August 19 to 24.

Earlier, ZAS had scheduled the show to run from August 26 to 31.

“Owing to the need to realign our calendar with both national and international stakeholders, while ensuring that we retain relevance and growth, we are now bringing back the show a week earlier to 19 to 24 August 2019,” said Dr Masuka.

“Some of our stakeholders might be affected by the change of date; we emphasise this has been done to ensure the show experience is unforgettable, transformational and impactful as we move further and beyond the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show.

“In addition to the changes of dates, we would like to inform you that we are likely to have a visiting Head of State as the guest of honour. The last time our show was opened by a foreign dignitary was in 2016 when we hosted the Vice President of Sierra Leone.”

Dr Masuka urged exhibitors to register quickly because exhibition space was running out.

He said the show will this year have 227 exhibitors compared to 219 last year.

“Space uptake is ahead of last year on over 28 000 square meters compared to 22 000 square meters in 2018,” said Dr Masuka. “That re-branding naturally brings with it the need to realign with our bigger and broader stakeholders.”

This year’s show runs under the theme, “Technology. Innovation. Modernisation: Adopt. Accentuate. Accelerate.”