ZIMBABWE’S latest industrial policy announcement, with its promise to grow manufacturing output from US$7 billion to US$12 billion by 2030, increase capacity utilisation, expand exports and deepen value addition, sounds ambitious on paper.
Government economist Stevenson Dlamini spoke confidently about lifting manufacturing growth above five percent annually, expanding electricity generation to 4 000MW, promoting industrial parks, embracing AI and strengthening local procurement. These are noble aspirations.
No serious citizen opposes industrialisation. No patriotic Zimbabwean rejects a future where factories hum again in Bulawayo, where steel plants operate at full capacity, where railways carry finished products instead of rusting in neglect and where young graduates find productive work instead of chasing visas and border-jumping routes across the world.
But Zimbabweans have heard this language before.
For more than four decades, this country has mastered the art of producing beautiful blueprints, polished policy documents and eloquent conference speeches while the real economy slowly deteriorates beneath them. What has crippled Zimbabwe is not a shortage of ideas. It is not a shortage of resources. It is not even a shortage of educated people. Our tragedy has always been the gap between policy pronouncements and implementation. We are a country overflowing with plans but starving for execution.
At independence in 1980, Zimbabwe inherited one of the strongest industrial bases in Africa outside South Africa.
The country had functioning rail systems, productive farms, textile industries, steel manufacturing, engineering firms and food processing plants. Bulawayo was called the industrial hub of the nation for good reason.
Our education system was among the best on the continent, producing engineers, accountants, technicians, and scientists who were respected globally. Many countries that now tower above us economically were nowhere near our level then.
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Bulls to charge into Zimbabwe gold stocks
- Ndiraya concerned as goals dry up
- Letters: How solar power is transforming African farms
Keep Reading
Vietnam was devastated by war. Singapore had no meaningful natural resources. China itself was still emerging from economic isolation and internal turmoil. Rwanda had not yet even experienced the genocide that would later almost destroy the nation. South Korea in the 1960s was poorer than many African countries. Yet today these countries are industrial giants or rapidly industrialising economies, while Zimbabwe continues discussing industrialisation as though it is still a future dream.
The question is uncomfortable but unavoidable. What exactly has been holding us back?
Part of the answer lies in inconsistency. Industrialisation requires long-term national discipline that stretches beyond election cycles, political slogans, and ministerial changes. Countries that industrialised successfully committed themselves to visions that transcended individuals. China did not become the “factory of the world” through five-year speeches alone.
It pursued a ruthless, deliberate, and patient national strategy over decades. It invested heavily in infrastructure, power generation, ports, technical education and industrial zones. It protected local industries when necessary, demanded technology transfer from foreign investors and created an environment where production was prioritised above consumption.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe became trapped in cycles of policy reversal, currency instability, corruption, political polarisation and short-term survival thinking. Investors cannot build industries in an economy where policies change overnight. Manufacturers cannot plan production when electricity disappears for 18 hours per day. Exporters cannot compete globally when transport systems collapse and logistics costs become unbearable. Industrialisation is not built through slogans. It is built through reliability.
Energy remains perhaps the clearest example of our contradictions. Every industrialised nation in history first solved its energy question. Factories run on power, not promises.
Yet Zimbabwe’s energy sector has remained trapped in crisis for years due to underinvestment, poor maintenance, corruption, outdated infrastructure, policy uncertainty and delayed reforms. We cannot seriously discuss AI integration, robotics and industrial automation while factories rely on diesel generators to survive. We cannot dream of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse when small businesses spend more time calculating load-shedding schedules than increasing production.
Countries at war have still managed to industrialise because they treated energy security as a national emergency. Ethiopia, despite internal conflict, aggressively pursued hydroelectric expansion. Rwanda, despite limited natural resources, focused on efficient governance and infrastructure. Bangladesh transformed itself to a global textile manufacturing centre despite political instability and poverty.
Vietnam emerged from decades of war to become a global electronics and manufacturing hub. These countries understood that industrialisation is not magic. It is the result of deliberate State coordination, institutional seriousness and relentless implementation.
Zimbabwe has also suffered from an extractive economic mentality. For decades, we exported raw minerals while importing finished products at far higher costs. We export lithium, chrome, platinum, and gold, yet import batteries, machinery and finished industrial goods. We export cotton and import expensive clothing. We export raw hides and import leather products. This model guarantees dependency. It guarantees unemployment. It guarantees that value creation happens elsewhere while we remain suppliers of cheap raw materials.
The irony with China is particularly painful. We proudly call China an “all-weather friend”, yet the relationship often benefits Chinese industrialisation more than our own.
Chinese companies extract minerals from Zimbabwe, process many of them abroad and reap the high-value industrial benefits in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai while Zimbabwe remains largely stuck at the extraction level. Friendship without technology transfer, local industrial development, and domestic beneficiation becomes one-sided dependency disguised as co-operation.
Zimbabwe must stop approaching foreign investment from a position of desperation. Countries that industrialise negotiate strategically. They demand local participation.
They insist on skills transfer. They create industrial linkages.
They ensure foreign companies help to build domestic productive capacity instead of simply extracting wealth.
The new lithium policy, which restricts the export of raw lithium and encourages local processing, is one of the few recent examples showing that Zimbabwe can think strategically when it chooses to. That policy should not remain an isolated case. It should become the national philosophy across all major minerals and sectors.
Africa’s broader failure to industrialise also reflects a deeper structural problem. The continent continues exporting raw materials and human capital while importing finished goods and dependency. African doctors, engineers, scientists and innovators leave for Europe, America, Canada and Australia because their home economies do not create environments where their talents can flourish productively. The continent exports brains just as it exports minerals. It is a tragic cycle of underdevelopment.
What Africa lacks is not intelligence. It lacks a coordinated industrial vision. The African Continental Free Trade Area should have triggered aggressive regional industrial planning, where African countries specialise strategically, build continental value chains and reduce dependency on external manufacturing powers. Instead, many governments still compete to export the same raw materials while importing the same finished goods. Industrialisation cannot happen through fragmentation.
Zimbabwe especially needs to abandon the culture of short-termism. Vision 2030 sounds politically attractive, but true industrial transformation requires a 30-year or 50-year national commitment. Singapore did not transform overnight. China did not industrialise within one political term. South Korea’s rise took decades of disciplined planning. Zimbabwe needs a generational industrial vision that survives changes in leadership, political parties, and economic cycles. We need a national consensus on industrialisation that is almost sacred.
That vision must start with practical realism rather than grand declarations. Targets must be measurable, incremental and enforced. Revive one industrial corridor properly before announcing 10 new ones. Fix power generation systematically. Modernise railways. Rebuild technical colleges. Protect strategic industries while demanding competitiveness. Create genuine special economic zones with functioning infrastructure rather than merely designated land on paper. Support small manufacturers with affordable credit. Fight smuggling aggressively because no local industry can survive when markets are flooded with cheap imports entering illegally.
Most importantly, Zimbabwe must rebuild institutional credibility. Investors, manufacturers, and citizens alike must believe that policies announced today will still exist tomorrow. Corruption must cease being treated as a side issue because corruption itself is anti-industrial. Every stolen infrastructure tender, every inflated contract and every looted public resource directly delays national development.
Industrialisation also demands a cultural shift. A country cannot consume its way into prosperity. It must produce. Zimbabwe must deliberately cultivate a production-oriented national mindset where engineering, manufacturing, innovation, and technical skills are celebrated as much as politics and bureaucracy. Nations become powerful not through speeches but through factories, research centres, patents, efficient logistics and disciplined institutions.
Dlamini was correct when he said success depends on infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, skills transfer and strong agriculture-mining-manufacturing linkages. But Zimbabweans no longer needs a diagnosis alone. They need evidence of seriousness. They need to see locomotives moving again. They need to see functioning factories, reliable electricity, expanding industrial parks and rising exports. Industrialisation must leave conference rooms and become visible in people’s daily lives.
Zimbabwe has no shortage of potential. Few countries possess our combination of mineral wealth, fertile land, educated citizens and strategic geographical position. Our failure has never been destiny. It has been choices. Poor choices, delayed choices and sometimes the absence of courage to think beyond immediate political convenience.
The uncomfortable truth is that history will not judge us by the number of industrial blueprints we launched over breakfast meetings. It will judge us by whether future generations inherit a productive nation or another pile of abandoned promises.
And there is still time to choose differently.
Lawrence Makamanzi is an analyst and researcher. He can be contacted on 0784318605 or at [email protected].
