Prof. Gift Mugano’s presentation under the banner of the Africa Economic Development Strategies (AEDS) think tank, an organisation to which he says he belongs, raises a fundamental and troubling question about the meaning of intellectual independence.
By Brigton Musonza
To state, without qualification at the start of his presentation (watch video below), that “As an independent think-tank, we are here to confirm what the Central Bank has been doing”, is not a harmless remark. It is a philosophical declaration, one that collapses the distinction between independent policy analysis and institutional endorsement.
From the standpoint of an independent economic think tank, there is nothing inherently wrong with agreeing with a central bank’s monetary policy stance. Agreement, however, is only meaningful when it is the outcome of rigorous interrogation, not the starting point, as he said, “we are aligned” with the Central Bank forecasts for the year 2026.
Independence is not defined by reflexive opposition to authority, but by intellectual autonomy, the freedom to question, dissent, and revise conclusions in response to emerging evidence. The danger lies not in alignment itself, but in how that alignment is reached and why.
When a think tank publicly defines its role as confirming central bank policy, at least six deep analytical and institutional problems arise.
First, confirmation displaces analysis.
Once a think tank begins from the premise that the central bank is correct, research ceases to be analytical and becomes justificatory. Monetary policy is not neutral. It is shaped by institutional incentives, political constraints, credibility preservation, and reputational risk.
Central banks, by design, defend their policy frameworks, even when outcomes are mixed or outright damaging to the real economy.
A think tank that “confirms” policy rather than interrogates it fails to test core assumptions about inflation dynamics, money supply transmission, interest rate sensitivity, exchange rate pass-through, or the interaction between monetary tightening and productive capacity.
At that point, it no longer produces knowledge; it produces reassurance. It becomes an echo chamber, not a generator of insight.
Second, central banks operate within narrow and often imported paradigms.
Most central banks in developing economies remain deeply anchored in orthodox monetarist and inflation-targeting frameworks. These frameworks assume stable money demand, efficient financial markets, weak links between interest rates and productive investment, and the primacy of monetary factors in explaining inflation.
Yet structurally constrained economies like Zimbabwe, characterised by informality, shallow capital markets, commodity dependence, infrastructure bottlenecks, and chronic supply-side shocks, rarely conform to these assumptions. Inflation in such contexts is often structural, cost-push, or externally transmitted rather than demand-driven.
An independent think tank is expected to interrogate whether orthodox models are appropriate, or whether alternative lenses: structuralist, post-Keynesian, developmental, or political economy approaches offer better explanatory power. To conform to the central bank’s paradigm by default is to foreclose analytical pluralism and reduce policy debate to a technocratic ritual.
Third, conformity risks policy capture and reputational erosion.
Credibility is the primary asset of any think tank. Once an institution is publicly perceived as aligned with the central bank, it risks being seen, rightly or wrongly, as an extension of the monetary authority. In politically contested economies like Zimbabwe, this perception is fatal.
Private sector actors, labour movements, academia, and civil society are unlikely to trust research whose conclusions appear pre-aligned with official positions. Independence is not merely a methodological principle; it is reputational capital. Without it, a think tank’s outputs lose legitimacy, influence, and relevance.
Fourth, central banks are not accountable for development outcomes.
Central banks typically operate under narrow mandates: price stability, exchange rate management, and financial system stability. They are not directly accountable for employment creation, industrial capacity expansion, export diversification, SME financing, or long-term structural transformation.
A think tank’s mandate, by contrast, is necessarily broader. It must ask uncomfortable questions: Is tight monetary policy choking productive credit? Are interest rates incompatible with industrial recovery? Is the exchange rate policy undermining competitiveness and value addition? Does “stability” come at the cost of de-industrialisation?
By conforming to central bank positions, a think tank risks adopting a narrow definition of macroeconomic success that ignores the real economy, growth, jobs, production, and structural change.
Fifth, groupthink during crises is historically dangerous.
Economic history is littered with policy failures sustained by institutional consensus rather than critical challenge. From IMF-backed structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s, to pro-cyclical austerity after financial crises, to excessive monetary tightening during supply-side inflation shocks, disaster often emerges when institutions harmonise instead of interrogate.
In such moments, the role of an independent think tank is not to “confirm” policy but to stress-test it, to ask what happens if assumptions are wrong, costs are underestimated, or distributional impacts are ignored. Consensus may be comforting, but it is rarely corrective.
Sixth, monetary policy is inherently political.
Interest rates, liquidity controls, and exchange rate regimes redistribute income and power between borrowers and lenders, labour and capital, exporters and importers, the state and the private sector. These choices shape winners and losers. To present them as purely technocratic is to obscure their political and social consequences.
A think tank that conforms to official positions without interrogating these distributional effects abdicates its responsibility to the public interest. Independence requires not only technical competence, but moral and analytical courage.
What, then, is the correct posture of an independent think tank?
It should agree with central bank policy when evidence supports it and, at the very least, when it comes to economic forecasts. It should disagree when assumptions are weak or costs are understated. Above all, it must remain analytically sovereign at all times. Alignment must be earned through evidence, not assumed through institutional proximity.
The problem, therefore, is not agreement. The problem is the subordination of thought.
When a think tank defines its mission as confirming rather than questioning, it ceases to be a think tank in the true sense. It becomes a communications annexe of the central bank; useful for legitimacy management, perhaps, but irrelevant to genuine economic development strategy.
And that is a far more serious failure than disagreement ever could be.
