Zimbabwe’s economic narrative is frequently dominated by familiar themes: currency instability, constrained liquidity, deindustrialisation, and capital scarcity. Yet beneath these visible pressures lies a quieter structural challenge that receives far less attention, the persistent erosion of value. Raw materials leave the economy with limited downstream beneficiation, finished goods are imported at high cost, products are used briefly, and assets prematurely exit the system as waste. In this context, the circular economy, particularly its second principle of circulating products and materials at their highest value, should not be viewed as environmental rhetoric but as a pragmatic economic strategy.
By Brighton Musonza
The logic is straightforward. Every product embodies accumulated value: design, engineering, transport, financing, labour, and energy. When goods are discarded before their functional life is exhausted, economies such as Zimbabwe lose more than physical materials. They lose embedded capital. In a country where foreign currency remains structurally scarce, maximising the productive lifespan of goods becomes an exercise in macroeconomic efficiency rather than sustainability idealism.
Retaining Value Through Maintenance and Reuse
The most effective way of preserving value is to keep products whole for as long as possible. Zimbabwe already offers a compelling illustration through its repair economy. Across Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, and smaller towns, thousands of informal technicians repair mobile phones, televisions, refrigerators, generators, and vehicles. These activities represent a form of circularity born not from policy design but from economic necessity.
A repaired smartphone, for example, delivers vastly more economic value than its recycled metals. Each successful repair delays replacement imports, preserves foreign currency, and sustains employment. Zimbabwe’s technicians routinely extend the lifespan of devices long considered obsolete in developed markets. The economic implications are significant. Repair and refurbishment industries are labour-intensive, skill-driven, and comparatively low in capital requirements — characteristics well aligned with Zimbabwe’s structural conditions.
Yet despite its scale, the repair sector remains largely informal and constrained. Access to genuine spare parts is inconsistent. Financing mechanisms are limited. Quality assurance systems are weak. Policy recognition remains minimal. A coherent industrial strategy could transform this survivalist ecosystem into a structured value-retention industry. Reduced duties on spare parts, technical certification frameworks, and credit facilities for refurbishment enterprises would not merely formalise activity but multiply productivity.
The same logic applies beyond electronics. Zimbabwe’s automotive sector offers another illustration. Second-hand vehicle imports dominate the market, yet a thriving industry exists around parts recovery, engine rebuilding, panel beating, and component remanufacturing. Vehicles circulate through multiple ownership cycles, often supported by sophisticated mechanical improvisation. What appears as economic fragility can equally be interpreted as embedded circular resilience.
Remanufacturing and Industrial Asset Circulation
Zimbabwe’s industrial sector, though diminished, contains vast stocks of ageing capital equipment. Conventional economic thinking views obsolete machinery as inefficient. Circular economy thinking reframes it as latent productive value.
Remanufacturing, restoring used components to like-new condition, represents a largely untapped opportunity. Industrial motors, pumps, compressors, gearboxes, and electrical systems can often be rebuilt at a fraction of replacement cost. In economies where capital imports are expensive and credit is constrained, extending asset life can deliver disproportionate gains.
Zimbabwe possesses historical strengths that support such a transition. The country’s legacy of engineering education, technical training, and mechanical expertise provides a foundation for refurbishment industries. Machine shops, metal fabricators, and electrical workshops already perform elements of remanufacturing, albeit at a limited scale.
Rather than prioritising capital-intensive greenfield industrialisation, Zimbabwe could accelerate productivity by circulating existing industrial capital. Structured remanufacturing clusters, component recovery markets, and incentives for modular equipment upgrades would unlock value embedded in machinery already present within the economy.
Mining equipment offers a particularly powerful example. Zimbabwe’s extractive sector depends on imported heavy machinery, yet maintenance and rebuild operations remain fragmented. A domestic remanufacturing ecosystem could significantly reduce downtime, import dependency, and operational costs. In resource-driven economies, equipment circulation becomes a competitive advantage.
Circulating Materials in the Biological Cycle
While discussions of circularity often focus on manufactured goods, Zimbabwe’s agrarian structure places equal importance on biological flows. Agriculture remains central to livelihoods, exports, and food security. Yet nutrient cycles are chronically inefficient.
Crop residues, livestock waste, and organic by-products frequently degrade without systematic recovery. Soil fertility, one of Zimbabwe’s most persistent productivity constraints, is fundamentally a circular economy issue. Nutrients leave the land through harvest but are inadequately returned.
Composting, anaerobic digestion, and bio-fertiliser production represent not environmental interventions but mechanisms for rebuilding agricultural capital. Livestock manure, municipal organic waste, sugarcane residues, and agro-processing by-products could underpin decentralised nutrient recovery systems.
The benefits extend beyond cost reduction. Improved soil health enhances yield stability, mitigates climate variability, and strengthens long-term agricultural resilience. Reduced fertiliser import dependence preserves foreign currency. Rural enterprise development creates employment in regions often excluded from formal industrial growth.
Zimbabwe’s tobacco sector offers an illustrative case. Tobacco farming generates significant organic waste streams that could be redirected into soil regeneration systems. Similarly, food processing industries produce biodegradable by-products that remain underutilised. Circular biological systems transform waste into productivity inputs.
The Informal Economy as a Circular System
Zimbabwe’s informal economy is frequently framed as a symptom of structural weakness. Yet from a circular economy perspective, it performs critical value-retention functions.
Second-hand clothing markets circulate garments through multiple life cycles. Furniture restoration businesses extend the usability of wood products. Metal recovery networks capture materials otherwise destined for landfills. Appliance refurbishment markets redistribute functional goods at lower price points.
These activities represent decentralised circular systems operating without formal recognition. The constraint is not the absence of circular behaviour but the absence of enabling structures. Informality restricts access to finance, scale efficiencies, insurance, and regulatory certainty.
Policy frameworks that integrate rather than suppress these sectors could unlock substantial economic gains. Skills certification, micro-credit facilities, and quality standardisation mechanisms would enhance productivity without dismantling entrepreneurial flexibility.
Zimbabwe’s economic structure may be uniquely positioned to benefit from circularity precisely because informal systems already perform foundational circulation functions.
Design as Economic Infrastructure
Perhaps the most underappreciated dimension of circulation is design. Products designed for linear consumption, difficult to repair, fused materials, and proprietary components, impose systemic inefficiencies on value-constrained economies.
Zimbabwe’s markets are increasingly supplied with goods optimised for replacement rather than longevity. Sealed electronics, blended textiles, and disposable plastics embed structural waste into consumption patterns.
Design determines economic outcomes. A product that cannot be repaired, disassembled, or remanufactured accelerates value destruction. Conversely, repairable and modular goods enhance economic resilience.
Zimbabwe could play a pioneering regulatory role by embedding circular design criteria into product standards. Repairability metrics, modular component requirements, material separability benchmarks, and biodegradability standards would reshape market incentives. Such measures would not restrict commerce but influence product quality, durability, and lifecycle value.
For economies constrained by capital scarcity, design functions as economic infrastructure.
Beyond Recycling: Preserving Embedded Value
Circular economy discourse often collapses into recycling advocacy. Recycling remains necessary, but it captures the lowest residual value. The greatest economic gains lie higher in the value hierarchy: maintenance, reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing.
A repaired generator delivers more value than recycled copper. A refurbished industrial motor retains more capital than melted steel. A reused garment preserves more economic utility than shredded fibres.
For Zimbabwe, this distinction is fundamental. Resource-constrained economies benefit most from value preservation rather than material recovery alone.
Circularity as Development Strategy
Zimbabwe’s development agenda traditionally emphasises investment attraction, export expansion, and capital accumulation. These priorities remain essential. Yet circulation offers an internal growth lever less dependent on volatile external inflows.
Circular systems reduce the need for continuous extraction of new capital. They optimise productivity under scarcity. They generate labour-intensive industries aligned with domestic capabilities. They enhance resilience against currency and supply-chain shocks.
In macroeconomic terms, circularity is not a sustainability policy. It is a capital efficiency strategy.
Rather than asking how Zimbabwe acquires more resources, the more consequential question may be how effectively Zimbabwe retains the value embedded in what it already possesses.
In a resource-constrained economy, waste is not merely an environmental concern. It is a structural economic inefficiency. Circulating products and materials at their highest value may ultimately prove less an ecological choice than a developmental imperative.
