Chinese community joins hand with Zimbabwean Ministry in greening key roads

The Chinese community-based in Zimbabwe has a zeal to make the South African country more beautiful. The community has joined hand with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in greening the country's strategic roads as the two nations strengthen environmental cooperation.

The community and the ministry started working together in 2018 for the national clean-up campaign and would focus on planting trees along the Harare airport road in this year, head of the Chinese community implementing the project Zhao Ke said on April 20.

Zhao Ke told Xinhua on the sidelines of the tree planting program along the airport road that they want to make the Chinese-built road, the gateway to Zimbabwe's capital Harare, more beautiful and project a good image of the country to visitors and tourists.

"Most visitors say that the airport road is too plain compared to other countries where airport roads have beautiful trees and beautiful landscaping," Zhao said. "In Zimbabwe, we thought it cannot be left out so we decided to plant one of the best and beautiful trees, the palm tree, along the airport road and altogether we are going to plant about 2,000 trees covering 5 km."

He said they will work on the project, dubbed Sino-Zimbabwe Friendship Forest the whole of 2019. In 2020, the project will be expanded to other cities and towns, Zhao said. "So far, we have 15 companies that have joined the program and we have more companies that want to join," Zhao said, as reported by Xinhua.

He said the Chinese community feels the need to help the people of Zimbabwe consider the long-standing ties between the two countries dating back to Zimbabwe's liberation struggle.

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