Coffee With Sanganai/Hlanganani Tourism Expo
If you are having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words… titambire, that’s how you welcome a visitor; it’s a subtle invitation to carry their luggage and enquire if they bring presents beyond the pleasure of their company… The city of Masvingo extended the courtesy to the world last week.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that from the 9th to the 12th of September, 2026, Masvingo, home to the Great Zimbabwe, hosted the 19th edition of Sanganai/Hlanganani Tourism Expo. It’s an annual Tourism Trade Fair that showcases tourism, attracting buyers, sellers, hoteliers, tour operators, airlines, investors, destination marketers and the whole ecosystem of people who convince other people that a country is worth visiting.
What started out as a small exhibition expo in 1982 under the Zimbabwe International Travel Expo (ZITE), has steadily grown into a premier tourism expo. Over the past couple of decades, it has alternated between Zimbabwe’s two largest cities, Harare and Bulawayo, initially hosted at what is now known as the Harare International Conference Centre and later at the ZITF showgrounds in Bulawayo.
It was eventually proposed that it be on a rotational basis across all the provinces in Zimbabwe, allowing for devolution and development to happen beyond the large cities. This was put into practice from the 2025 edition which was held in Mutare a city in eastern Zimbabwe and the 2026 edition held in Masvingo.
This has seen Masvingo Airport get refurbished, with the national airline Air Zimbabwe, introducing daily flights to Masvingo to cater for the expo, a route which hadnt been serviced in 20 years..
Hopefully, they will continue to provide regular flights on the route beyond the expo….
During the president’s opening remarks, he quipped that the people tasked with picking the expo destination would do well to pick an underdeveloped area which would benefit immensely from the infrastructural work to make an area suitable to host the event; roads, electrification, water and other refurbishments.
If you are having coffee with me, I would tell you that Masvingo city got a facelift and cleanup in time for the tourism expo, although the city fathers maintain it wasn’t simply for the expo but in line with ensuring the city has standards befitting a provincial capital…
One of the notable changes was the removal of buses from city centre pickup points and back to their designated bus terminus. A move which was met with mixed reactions for its rushed implementation and the resultant inconvenience, as the city doesn’t quite have a proper cross-location public transport system… something which I experienced first-hand when I tried to get t the venue for expo.
The place where one could get “lifts” that went in the general direction of the Sanganai/Hlanganani direction was not its trademark chaotic mess and was instead deserted but oh so neat and tidy. I tried to use a ride-hailing service but apparently those were not doing pickups in that area because there were municipal police ready to clamp and issue fines. The few who were entertaining offers were charging premium rates.
So I decided to walk towards the direction of the hosting venue while considering my option as taxis and then I spotted a billboard announcing it was 2.5km away… I figured why not…
I plugged in my earphones, listened to some music and walked, surprisingly, I didnt break a sweat and got there in under 40 minutes… not bad at all… In the next edition, I hope they arrange for shuttle transportation or mark out designated areas for pickup and drop-off for those relying on public transport.
The 2026 Sanganai/Hlanganani Dzimbabwe Tourism Expo attracted 405 exhibitors and 153 buyers, including 125 international buyers from all over the world, including China, India, Germany and the United States. With numbers navigating all the exhibitions was an interesting adventure, and perhaps they ought to have interactive maps available beforehand so one can plan out their days ahead of time.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that in the spirit with which my first-grade teacher would tell us that we were all number one, I would say that generally all the exhibitions were impressive, some more than others.
There were tertiary institutions showcasing their innovative projects, heritage-related work and education initiatives, which included value addition to indigenous crops, into nutrient rich food, snacks and even wine made from wild fruit rom nyii to hute and mazhanje.
We have an untapped market of indigenous fruits which would benefit from such value addition, and I hope this kind of innovation doesn’t simply remain vanity projects that disappear once the exhibition banners come down, but remain scalable and sustainable enterprises that generate not only money, but pride in indigenous produce.
I picked up some interesting insights into the history about the Great Zimbabwe, it was actively occupied for over 300 years but under different leadership, each with their different living arrangements and hierarchies, which accounts for some of the seemingly conflicting information offered by researchers, academics and archivists, and unfortunately our ancestors only passed information via oral tradition and some knowledge got lost along the way to us…
For example the chevron pattern which features alot: was it simply just a design or was it a representation of waves in the ocean, or the mythical fertility snakes moving in the womb, was it symbolisingo sacred and philosophical meanings or maybe someone just really liked triangles…
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that one thing I hope they improve upon is to ensure that community hosting the expo be included in the event… I ran into people who were disgruntled that the city fathers were only making improvements with the tourism visitors in mind and not residents who were also disappointed that the expo didn’t actively bring an influx of new business as the visitors were mostly a self-contained crowd simply passing through.
And then we have a new statutory public holiday, Munhumutapa Day observed annually on the 15th in of September in honor Zimbabwe’s cultural heritage, the Mutapa Empire,a powerful Shona empire that flourished from the 14th to the 17th centuries it also happens directly coincide with the president’s birthday, and is also a celebration of his leadership…
There’s some who argue that it foreshadows the future in which the country becomes a monarchy and its not helped by remarks made by the president at the opening of Sanganai/Hlanganani that, when expo returns to Masvingo Province in 2035 he would still be around to see how things have faired…
Whats been happening in your neck of the woods? If you were president, would you have your birthday declared a public holiday? Asking for a country that now has two president’s birthdays as public holidays.
~B
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