Zimbabwe should resist the increasingly fashionable argument that its economic future lies primarily in becoming a services economy. Services are important, but they cannot substitute for a productive industrial base. For a country with Zimbabwe’s agricultural capacity, mineral wealth, existing industrial infrastructure and relatively sophisticated financial system, abandoning manufacturing in favour of services would risk institutionalising the very structural weaknesses that have held the economy back.
By Brighton Musonza
The more credible strategy is to build a productive services economy around agriculture, mining and manufacturing, rather than attempting to build an economy in which services become the principal source of growth while the country imports an increasing proportion of the goods it consumes.
This distinction matters. Banking, insurance, logistics, telecommunications, software, professional services, property, tourism and financial markets are most powerful when they increase the productivity of the sectors that produce tradable goods. A bank financing a factory, an insurer covering mining equipment, a logistics company moving processed agricultural products to export markets and an investment manager financing an industrial project are all part of a modern services economy. But their economic value is ultimately strengthened by the productive activity taking place underneath them.
The case for a single currency is fundamentally an industrial question
Zimbabwe’s debate over the single currency should therefore not be treated simply as a monetary argument. It is also an argument about production, investment and the architecture of the economy.
The IMF has acknowledged that Zimbabwe remains highly dollarised while the authorities’ stated objective is to move towards a mono-currency system, with the ZiG ultimately becoming the sole legal tender.
The central question is whether Zimbabwe wants to continue operating largely inside a monetary system whose principal currency is issued by another country, or whether it wants to rebuild the monetary institutions necessary to finance its own economic development.
A credible domestic currency provides the financial system with instruments that a permanently dollarised economy cannot fully reproduce. It gives the central bank a domestic monetary policy instrument, allows banks to develop local-currency lending markets, creates a domestic yield curve and enables the government and private sector to issue financial instruments denominated in the country’s own currency.
None of this means that simply printing a currency creates prosperity. It does not. A domestic currency without fiscal discipline, monetary credibility, reserves and productive capacity can become another source of instability. But the answer to the weaknesses of domestic money cannot logically be permanent dependence on foreign money.
Zimbabwe therefore needs to make the ZiG credible precisely because it wants to make the economy more productive.
The IMF’s own recent assessments recognise that Zimbabwe’s stabilisation has been supported by tighter monetary policy and greater fiscal discipline, with inflation falling sharply and the economy benefiting from stronger agriculture and mining performance.
That creates an opportunity to move from monetary stabilisation towards monetary reconstruction.
Manufacturing is not an outdated economic model
There is a tendency in some development discussions to treat manufacturing as though it were an industrial-era concept that poorer countries should simply bypass in favour of finance, tourism, digital services and other service activities.
That is too simplistic.
Manufacturing remains one of the principal mechanisms through which economies develop productive capabilities. It creates demand for engineering, transport, finance, insurance, technology, energy, construction, warehousing and professional services. It also creates opportunities for firms to learn, scale, export and move gradually into more sophisticated production.
Zimbabwe already possesses much of the industrial ecosystem required to begin this process.
The country has commercial agriculture, tobacco, cotton, sugar, dairy, grain production, horticulture, food processing, chemicals, packaging, construction materials, metals, engineering firms and mining companies. The problem is not that Zimbabwe has no productive base. The problem is that the connections between these activities have been weakened.
That is precisely where industrial policy should concentrate.
Agriculture should not simply produce crops for export. It should supply factories.
Tobacco should generate cigarette and other processed tobacco industries. Cotton should support textile and clothing production. Sugarcane should support sugar and downstream chemical industries. Milk should feed dairy processing. Maize and wheat should support milling and food manufacturing. Oilseeds should support edible oils and animal-feed production.
The economic objective is to capture more of the value chain before the product leaves the country.
Agriculture already has a strong relationship with manufacturing in Zimbabwe. The World Bank has estimated that agriculture contributes about 17% of GDP, accounts for around 40% of exports and supplies a substantial share of manufacturing’s raw materials.
The opportunity is therefore not to choose between agriculture and manufacturing. It is to make agriculture the foundation of a broader agro-industrial economy.
Mining should become an industrial ecosystem
The same principle applies to mining.
Zimbabwe’s mineral resources should not be viewed merely as a source of foreign currency. They should also be viewed as a potential industrial demand base.
Every large mine requires pumps, conveyors, crushers, compressors, electrical equipment, transformers, cables, protective clothing, vehicles, tyres, engineering services, maintenance, software, laboratory services, construction materials and specialised machinery.
Much of this is imported.
That represents an enormous industrial opportunity.
The objective should be to progressively increase the proportion of mining expenditure captured by Zimbabwean manufacturers and engineering companies. A mining boom should therefore produce more than higher mineral exports. It should create an engineering boom around the mines.
The long-term prize is a domestic industrial ecosystem in which mining creates demand for manufacturing, manufacturing creates demand for engineering, engineering creates demand for technical skills, and all of these activities create demand for banking, insurance, logistics, property and professional services.
That is how an economy develops depth.
Services should serve production — not replace it
The argument for a services-led economy becomes particularly problematic when it is interpreted as meaning that Zimbabwe should abandon the difficult work of rebuilding productive industries.
A service provider cannot exist in an economic vacuum.
Banks need borrowers. Insurers need businesses and assets to insure. Logistics companies need goods to transport. Commercial property requires tenants. Telecommunications companies need businesses and consumers using their networks. Investment managers require investable companies and projects.
A country can certainly become wealthy through sophisticated services. But the most successful service economies generally operate within highly productive economic systems that contain significant capital, technology, human capital and globally competitive companies.
The issue is therefore not whether Zimbabwe should have a services sector. It absolutely should.
The question is what the services sector should serve.
Zimbabwe should aim for a productive services economy in which financial services, technology, logistics and professional expertise increase the productivity and competitiveness of agriculture, mining and manufacturing.
Britain provides a useful warning
The United Kingdom is an instructive example of why Zimbabwe should be cautious about treating the expansion of services as an automatic substitute for industrial capacity.
Britain remains one of the world’s most sophisticated service economies, with major strengths in finance, professional services, technology, education, media and other internationally traded services. Its services sector continues to be an important source of economic activity and growth.
But the country’s long-term decline in manufacturing has also generated persistent debates about productivity, regional inequality, industrial resilience, energy costs, investment and the ability to commercialise innovation domestically.
That does not mean Britain’s services economy is a failure. It plainly is not.
It demonstrates something more important: a sophisticated services economy does not remove the importance of productive capacity.
Britain can import manufactured products because it possesses a large, wealthy and globally integrated economy with deep financial markets, strong institutions and a highly developed international services sector. Zimbabwe does not have the same economic structure.
It cannot sensibly copy the final structure of a mature developed economy without first building the productive capacity that supports high incomes.
Recent UK data also illustrates that services remain the dominant driver of growth, while production and manufacturing continue to face their own challenges. In the first quarter of 2026, UK GDP increased by 0.6%, with services providing the largest sectoral contribution.
That is useful evidence of the strength of services, but it is not evidence that Zimbabwe should abandon industrialisation.
Zimbabwe is at a completely different stage of development.
The missing link is capital formation
The central economic problem is therefore not simply the composition of GDP. It is the country’s ability to convert savings and financial resources into productive capital.
This is where the banking system becomes crucial.
Zimbabwe needs banks capable of transforming deposits into long-term credit for factories, mines, farms, logistics companies, housing, infrastructure and other productive assets.
It also needs capital markets capable of providing longer-term financing through bonds, equity, infrastructure funds, REITs and other investment vehicles.
A functioning domestic currency can form an important part of that financial architecture because it allows the financial system to develop instruments specifically suited to the domestic economy.
The objective should be to establish a monetary transmission mechanism through which savings become investment, investment becomes productive capacity, productive capacity generates employment, and employment generates household income.
That cycle is much more important than simply increasing the size of the financial sector.
Zimbabwe should build around what it already has
There is little economic justification for Zimbabwe to discard its existing comparative advantages in order to pursue an abstract model of a services economy. In other words, there is no reason for reinventing the wheel.
The country has agricultural land, mineral resources, industrial sites, established companies, technical skills, universities, financial institutions and a domestic consumer market.
What it lacks is sufficient coordination between these assets.
A farmer should be connected to a processor. A processor should be connected to a manufacturer. A manufacturer should be connected to a bank. A mine should be connected to engineering companies. An engineering company should be connected to universities and technical colleges. A manufacturer should be connected to export markets.
And the financial system should sit across this entire chain, providing working capital, investment finance, insurance, payments and risk management.
That is an economic ecosystem.
The single currency should support that ecosystem
The case for a single currency should therefore be framed around economic reconstruction rather than monetary nationalism.
Zimbabwe needs a currency capable of performing the basic functions of money: a reliable unit of account, medium of exchange and store of value.
The ultimate objective should be to make domestic currency credible enough that businesses are willing to price, save, borrow and invest in it.
That cannot be imposed by decree alone.
It has to be earned through monetary discipline, fiscal credibility, adequate reserves, functioning financial markets and consistent economic policy.
The transition will therefore require patience and institutional discipline. But difficulty is not an argument for abandoning the objective.
The IMF records that Zimbabwe’s authorities have committed to moving towards a mono-currency system by 2030. The important issue now is ensuring that the transition is supported by the institutions required to make the currency credible.
Zimbabwe does not need to choose between manufacturing and services
The real choice is not manufacturing versus services. It is production-led services versus consumption-led services.
A productive economy needs accountants, bankers, lawyers, software developers, insurers, logistics companies, architects, estate managers, telecommunications companies, consultants and investment professionals.
But these professionals should increasingly be servicing productive enterprises.
Zimbabwe should therefore pursue a manufacturing revival in which services become the infrastructure around production.
A stronger manufacturing sector would create more demand for banking. More mining investment would create demand for engineering finance. More agricultural processing would create demand for logistics and insurance. More factories would create demand for commercial property. More exports would create demand for foreign-exchange management and trade finance.
Industrialisation would consequently enlarge the services economy rather than suppress it.
The objective should be structural transformation
Zimbabwe’s economic challenge is ultimately one of structural transformation.
The country must move from an economy where raw materials are extracted, agricultural products are exported, finished goods are imported and financial resources circulate around consumption, towards an economy where domestic capital finances production and domestic production generates increasingly sophisticated services.
That requires rebuilding the links between money and production.
The single currency is one part of that architecture. Manufacturing is another. Agricultural transformation is another.
Mining beneficiation and domestic engineering are another.
Deep capital markets, long-term bank lending, reliable electricity, transport infrastructure and credible property rights complete the framework.
The goal should not be to recreate the industrial economy of the past exactly as it was. It should be to create a modern industrial economy in which manufacturing is increasingly automated, technologically sophisticated, export-oriented and integrated with financial and digital services.
Zimbabwe should not be frightened by the word industrialisation.
The country should be frightened by the prospect of becoming permanently dependent on imported manufactured goods while exporting raw materials and relying on foreign currency for domestic economic activity.
That model can generate periods of stability and consumption. It cannot easily generate the depth of capital formation, technological learning and employment creation required for sustained development.
Zimbabwe therefore needs to keep moving towards a credible single currency while simultaneously rebuilding its productive economy.
The objective should be straightforward: use monetary sovereignty to support capital formation; use capital formation to rebuild manufacturing; use manufacturing to deepen services; and use the entire productive system to create better-paid employment and rising household incomes.
Services should be the nervous system of Zimbabwe’s economy.
But agriculture, mining and manufacturing must remain its productive muscle.
Without that productive foundation, a services-led Zimbabwe risks becoming an economy that is increasingly efficient at financing, distributing and importing other people’s production.
With it, Zimbabwe can build something considerably more durable: a modern, diversified economy in which its currency, banks, capital markets, industries and natural resources reinforce one another.
The false comfort of gold and remittances
Zimbabwe’s dollarised economy also rests on two particularly important sources of foreign-currency liquidity: gold exports and diaspora remittances. Both are valuable to the economy, but neither provides a sustainable foundation for long-term economic development. Gold is a finite natural asset. Its extraction can generate foreign exchange and fiscal revenues, but it also carries environmental costs, particularly where mining expands faster than environmental management, land rehabilitation and formalisation.
More fundamentally, gold cannot by itself reproduce the productive capacity of an economy. Once the mineral is extracted and sold, the country has converted part of its natural capital into financial liquidity; it has not necessarily created a permanent domestic manufacturing capability, technological ecosystem or recurring stream of productive income. A sustainable economy cannot therefore be built on the assumption that ever-increasing mineral extraction will indefinitely finance consumption and imports.
Remittances present a different but equally important structural vulnerability. Zimbabwe’s diaspora has been an extraordinary source of household support and foreign exchange, but remittances are ultimately transfers from people whose economic lives are increasingly located outside Zimbabwe. As the first generation of emigrants ages, the connection between their children and Zimbabwe may naturally weaken.
The next generation may have fewer familial, economic and emotional reasons to maintain the same level of financial transfers to a country in which they were not raised and where they may have limited economic interests. Remittances should therefore be treated as an important supplement to domestic production, not as a permanent substitute for it.
This exposes the fundamental weakness of a dollarised economic model sustained disproportionately by mineral extraction and external household transfers. Neither gold nor remittances can provide the foundation for a self-reinforcing cycle of domestic capital formation, industrial investment, productivity growth and employment. Gold can be depleted; remittance relationships can weaken across generations.
Manufacturing capacity, productive agriculture, engineering capability and domestic enterprises, by contrast, can be continually reproduced, expanded and improved. Zimbabwe’s long-term objective should therefore be to convert today’s foreign-currency inflows into productive assets that generate tomorrow’s income, rather than allowing those inflows to perpetuate an economic structure dependent on importing the very goods and productive capabilities the country should increasingly be producing itself.
