THERE is a particular kind of audacity that masquerades as opportunity. It arrives dressed in warm language — “we would love to have you share your insights… this is a wonderful platform for your profile… think of the connections you will make” — and asks, with a straight face, that you donate the most valuable thing you possess: your expertise.
There will be no expectation of your invoice, yet participants are being billed to attend. There is no room for negotiation. You are simply expected to show up, pour yourself out, then slip quietly through the side door while the caterers count their cash. This is, in essence, an invisible tax on expertise.
In the first quarter of 2026, I declined three speaking invitations. One coincided with an illness that left me confined and horizontal. The other two, however, revealed something more instructive than a fever: they offered nothing.
No fee, no honorarium, no meaningful exchange of value. Instead, there was the familiar suggestion that my time and knowledge should be grateful for the exposure.
I was not grateful. I was weary of the assumption that my intellectual property is not worthy.
This is not a personal grievance. It is a structural problem — and it is quietly eating away at Zimbabwe’s knowledge economy. Walk into any industry conference, corporate wellness day, church leadership summit or chamber of commerce breakfast and you will find the same architecture of inequity.
The venue is paid for. The banners are printed.
The PA system is tested by a technician who will invoice before packing his cables. The catering arrives from a company that has never entertained the idea of working for “profile-building”.
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Yet the keynote speaker — the very person around whose mind the event is organised, whose name appears on the invitation, whose credibility lends the occasion its weight — is handed a bottle of water, a front-row seat and, if the organisers are feeling generous, a certificate of participation.
That certificate is offered as though the speaker were a child in a colouring competition.
This is not generosity. It is exploitation dressed up as community development — and we have been polite about it for far too long.
Let us consider, honestly, what a speaker brings. Behind a 60-minute address on leadership, talent retention or workplace mental health lies a decade — sometimes two or three — of accumulated experience. That experience includes failures absorbed, setbacks processed and patterns identified across hundreds of professional encounters. A keynote does not emerge from a weekend of enthusiasm.
A financial literacy workshop demands hours of research, structure, audience profiling, rehearsal and the quiet courage to stand before strangers and say something worth hearing.
To dismiss this as a casual favour — a contribution to the “national good” that somehow exists outside the economy — is to fundamentally misunderstand what expertise is and what it costs to build.
Part of the problem is cultural, and it must be said plainly.
Across many African professional contexts, generosity is often conflated with servitude, romanticised beyond usefulness. We celebrate the elder who dispenses wisdom freely, yet rarely pause to ask whether the electricity at his home is still connected. Altruism is a virtue.
Chronic unpaid intellectual labour is not. It is a slow financial haemorrhage. The speaker who cannot sustain a practice will eventually make the rational decision: accept a salaried position, withdraw from public discourse, and leave the community poorer for it. But speakers themselves are not entirely blameless. There is a supply-side failure we seldom address with sufficient candour. Many capable professionals, eager to remain visible, have inadvertently trained organisers to expect free labour.
Each time a speaker accepts a zero-fee engagement without negotiation — without even attempting to establish a minimal value exchange — they are not building goodwill.
They are reinforcing a market expectation that will be used against the next speaker who tries to hold the line.
The race to the bottom is often run by the speakers themselves — one well-intentioned, unpaid workshop at a time.
Both sides must change.
For organisers — particularly corporate entities hosting annual general meetings, product launches and executive retreats on budgets that would make a small non-governmental organisation weep — there is no credible justification for unpaid expertise. None.
The resources exist. What is missing is the willingness to treat intellectual labour as a legitimate line item. If an event cannot afford its keynote speaker, then it cannot afford that speaker.
The honest course is to say so, rather than wrapping the request in flattery and hoping applause will substitute for compensation.
For speakers, the imperative is professional self-possession. Learn to convert conversation into engagement.
Every coffee meeting where someone wants to “pick your brain”, every late-night WhatsApp voice note seeking strategic advice, every 45-minute “introductory” call that ends with “so helpful, thank you” — each carries a fee waiting to be named. The consultant who redirects informal requests into formal engagements is not being difficult or mercenary.
They are modelling a sustainable professional relationship — one that allows them to serve well, consistently and without resentment.
Structurally, the profession needs what others have long secured: associations with teeth.
Bodies that publish fee guidelines, share reputational information about chronic non-payers, and give individual speakers the collective backing to stand firm. When a physician sets a consultation rate, no one cries greed. When a lawyer bills by the hour, the market accepts it. The knowledge economy deserves the same legitimacy.
Zimbabwe’s next chapter — one built on diversification, human capital development and regionally competitive thinking — depends, in part, on a thriving, financially viable class of independent professionals. People willing to challenge orthodoxy, provoke necessary discomfort, inspire action and educate beyond institutional boundaries.
But that class will not survive on goodwill and buffet plates. It will not be sustained by certificates, free accommodation or LinkedIn mentions.
Intellectual property has value. Expertise has value. Time — irreplaceable and non-renewable — has value. Until the market fully internalises these truths, and until speakers enforce them without apology, the freeloading, brain-picking economy will continue to feast on the very people whose thinking it claims to celebrate.
And, as ever, the food will go to everyone but the cook.
Irrigation schemes also depend on reliable electricity supply, well-maintained canals and pumping systems and the technical capacity of farmers to use water efficiently. Without these supporting systems, the existence of dams does not automatically translate into higher agricultural productivity.
There is also a broader lesson embedded in the idea of global water bankruptcy. The warning from the United Nations is not simply about scarcity. It is about sustainability. Many of the regions now facing water crises reached that point through decades of over-extraction, inefficient irrigation practices and poor water governance. If Zimbabwe and other African countries seek to expand irrigation, they must do so carefully to avoid repeating these mistakes.
Modern agricultural technologies provide a pathway forward. Precision irrigation systems such as drip irrigation do reduce water use dramatically while increasing yields. Soil moisture monitoring, improved watershed management and drought-resistant crop varieties further improve water productivity. These approaches allow farmers to produce more food with less water, aligning agricultural expansion with environmental sustainability.
Beyond technology, governance will be critical. Transparent water allocation systems, effective management of dam infrastructure and long-term planning for climate adaptation will determine whether Zimbabwe’s water resources become a driver of prosperity or a missed opportunity.
The broader geopolitical implications should not be overlooked. As global water scarcity intensifies, the geography of food production will shift. Nations with reliable freshwater and available farmland could emerge as central pillars of global food security. Investment flows, agricultural partnerships and supply agreements may increasingly gravitate toward regions capable of sustaining large-scale food production under conditions of growing environmental stress. Africa and Zimbabwe within it, could play a crucial role in that emerging landscape.
But given the current US/Israel war against Iran, future wars might play out in Africa, as those who believe they have more rights and entitlement to world resources, start wars, so that they could occupy Africa’s farm land for cheap, whilst utilising the freshwater resources for agricultural production for export to their water-starved societies offshore.
But natural endowment alone is never enough. History shows that resources only translate into prosperity when they are matched with institutions, infrastructure and long-term vision. The United Nations’ warning about global water bankruptcy should therefore be understood not only as a crisis but a signal. It highlights the growing importance of water as a strategic resource in the global economy.
Conclusion
For Zimbabwe, the presence of many dams and substantial freshwater reserves represents more than a legacy of past engineering projects. In an increasingly water-constrained world, it may represent one of the country’s most important strategic assets.
The challenge now is to transform that asset into sustainable agricultural growth and in doing so, help feed a world that is rapidly approaching the limits of its water account.
Ndoro-Mkombachoto is a former academic and banker. As a systems transformation strategist, she helps multilateral agencies such as the UN, IFC/World Bank, DANIDA, CIDA and GIZ to future-proof operations in complex, evolving markets. She also works with private and public sector organisations in emerging economies, helping them navigate institutional complexity and turn systemic constraints into growth opportunities. She is the current chairperson of NetOne Financial Services PLC, a subsidiary of NetOne Telecomms. Follow Gloria on YouTube @HeartfeltwithGloria or contact her at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
