Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

Zimbabwe has been touted as the fastest-growing economy in southern Africa, with headlines proudly proclaiming GDP growth rates of 6 percent and beyond.

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On paper, this makes the country look like a regional star.

South Africa struggles with growth barely scraping 1–2 percent.

Yet anyone living in Zimbabwe knows the disconnect: streets remain in disrepair, jobs are scarce, and wages stagnant.

How then can an economy so visibly struggling be “growing faster than its neighbors”?

The answer is simple — and it exposes the illusion behind these figures: it’s called the base effect.

Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed over decades.

From the late 1990s through the 2000s, mismanagement, hyperinflation, and chaotic land reform shrank the economy to a shadow of its former self.

In 2008 alone, GDP contracted by over 18 percent.

By 2009, the economy was barely half its pre-crisis size.

When you start from such a low base, even modest absolute gains look enormous in percentage terms.

That is why a $1 billion increase in GDP can register as 5 or 6 percent growth.

It is not a miracle.

It is mathematics.

Recent statistics make this illusion painfully clear.

In 2024, Zimbabwe’s GDP grew by just $1.3 billion, producing a modest 2.9 percent growth.

Forecasts for 2025 suggest an increase of roughly $2.7 billion, translating into a headline growth rate of 6 percent, with the World Bank projecting 6.6 percent.

In absolute terms, these are small additions to an economy valued at around $46 billion, yet the percentages make it look enormous.

To put it in perspective, imagine someone earning $50 a month who receives a paltry $25 increment.

In absolute terms, it is tiny, but expressed as a percentage, it looks like a 50 percent pay rise — far more impressive than the actual addition.

The same principle applies to Zimbabwe: small increases in a small economy produce headline-grabbing percentages, creating the false impression of a boom while real expansion remains limited.

The contrast with South Africa underscores the point.

South Africa’s GDP is roughly $460 billion, almost ten times the size of Zimbabwe’s.

Even if South Africa added $6 billion in a single year — more than twice what Zimbabwe expects in 2025 — its growth rate would barely register at 1.3 percent.

It is the same as someone earning US$1,000 a month receiving a US$100 salary increase — which translates to a 10 percent increase.

On paper, the worker earning US$50 who received an increase of only US$25 — a 50 percent salary increase — appears to have gained far more than the one who earned US$1,000 and received a US$100 increase, which is 10 percent.

But in reality, would it make any sense for the worker who received just US$25 to boast that they gained more than the one who received US$100?

Yet that is exactly what the Zimbabwean government is doing by bragging that our economy is the fastest-growing in the region, creating the misleading impression that it is growing faster — or performing better — than much larger economies such as South Africa’s.

A small economy magnifies modest gains; a large economy dilutes massive ones.

Percentages alone, without context, create a misleading story.

The state then misleads the nation into believing Zimbabwe’s economy is outpacing South Africa’s, even though Zimbabwe would have grown by only $2 billion while South Africa added $6 billion.

So which economy is truly growing bigger?

The base effect also explains Zimbabwe’s volatile growth.

After reporting 6.1 percent in 2022 and 5.3 percent in 2023, the economy slowed to 1.7 percent in 2024 before bouncing back to roughly 6 percent in 2025.

This is not the story of a booming economy; it is the story of a small, vulnerable, and volatile economy recovering from collapse.

Even modest gains can produce large swings, and tiny losses can appear catastrophic.

Sustaining high growth is difficult once the initial rebound fades.

Politicians and state media tout these numbers as proof of competence, but they tell you nothing about ordinary citizens’ lives — nothing about jobs, wages, infrastructure, or living standards.

Farmers struggle to access affordable inputs, traders face erratic electricity and water supply, and workers see wages that barely cover inflation.

Streets crumble under potholes and dust, yet the government can announce a “growing economy.”

The arithmetic behind the base effect is simple.

Small economies can appear to “grow fast” with modest absolute gains, while large economies show tiny percentage growth despite much larger gains.

This explains the swings in Zimbabwe’s reported growth — it is recovery from collapse, not stable expansion.

The lesson is clear: do not be fooled by headline growth figures.

Look beyond the percentages and ask the hard questions.

Are people employed?

Are wages rising?

Are services reliable?

Until growth translates into jobs, infrastructure, and improved living standards, the “fastest-growing economy” label remains hollow — numbers for newspapers, not for the people.

Zimbabwe’s story is a cautionary tale.

Percentages are seductive; they promise progress without substance.

True economic growth is measured not in abstract statistics, but in the daily lives of citizens.

Until these numbers begin to reflect reality — until roads are fixed, jobs are created, and wages rise — the narrative of a “fastest-growing economy” will remain exactly that: a narrative, not a fact.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782282975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s latest claim that the ZiG now accounts for 30–40% of national payment system transactions is being paraded as proof that the local currency is finally gaining public confidence.

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But this conclusion is not just premature—it is profoundly self-delusional.

Even if we were, for a moment, to accept the central bank’s statistics at face value, the leap from increased usage to increased trust is a dangerous fallacy that ignores both economic reality and Zimbabwe’s deeply scarred collective memory.

Let me ask the RBZ Governor, John Mushayavanhu, one simple question.

If he were given a choice to earn his entire salary either in US dollars or in ZiG, which would he choose?

And if he insists—publicly and unequivocally—that he prefers the ZiG, then let him prove it by taking his full salary in that currency.

Until that happens, all claims of growing confidence remain hollow.

Because the uncomfortable truth is this: even those who run the country and manage its monetary policy do not trust the ZiG.

This lack of elite confidence is not hidden; it is flaunted in plain sight.

Zimbabwe’s ruling class has an almost performative love for cash—doling it out like confetti at a wedding.

We have all watched the President himself, senior officials, and politically connected tenderpreneurs handing out stacks of money to musicians, church leaders, footballers, and various public figures.

They give away vehicles.

They splash cash at events.

Yet that cash is never ZiG.

Not once have we seen anyone in power gifting thousands or millions in ZiG.

Why?

If the ZiG is stable, trustworthy, and the future of Zimbabwe’s monetary system, why is it absent whenever real wealth is displayed or transferred?

Just days ago, the nation watched in disbelief as tenderpreneurs Scott Sakupwanya and Wicknell Chivayo sat with new Scottland FC coach Peter Ndlovu, reportedly handing over an initial payment believed to be around US$300,000—in hard cash.

Where was the ZiG?

Why wasn’t this salary paid electronically, through the banking system, as is demanded of ordinary employers and employees across the country?

Why are those at the top allowed to transact in bricks of US dollars while everyone else is lectured about patriotism and confidence in the local currency?

If the powerful—who have access to insider information, policy direction, and state protection—have not embraced the ZiG, on what moral or economic basis are ordinary Zimbabweans expected to do so?

This brings us to the real reason why ZiG transactions may have increased.

It is not because Zimbabweans suddenly believe in the currency.

It is because they are forced to use it.

Civil servants, pensioners, and many workers receive part of their income in ZiG.

They do not choose this arrangement; it is imposed on them.

Once the ZiG lands in their hands, they have only one rational response: get rid of it as quickly as possible.

I witnessed this logic firsthand through my late mother, a retired nurse.

Each month, she received a paltry US$50 and an even more miserable ZiG component from NSSA, along with about US$120 as a widow’s pension following my father’s death—he was a retired teacher.

Although I took care of her and she did not need to rely on this money, she had a ritual.

Every payout day, she would insist on buying snacks for me and my son—often takeaways and her favourite Madeira cake from Pick n Pay—specifically to dispose of the ZiG portion.

The US dollars she kept safely aside.

Her reasoning was always the same, and painfully simple: ngatitoshandisei zvimaZiG izvi zvisati zvaloser value—let’s use these ZiG before they lose value.

That mindset is not unique.

It is replicated daily in households across Zimbabwe.

People spend the ZiG quickly because they do not trust it as a store of value, while hoarding the US dollar component at home.

Increased usage, therefore, is not a vote of confidence; it is a survival strategy.

If Governor Mushayavanhu cannot grasp this basic truth, then he will continue misleading both himself and the country’s authorities.

The ZiG is not being embraced—it is being offloaded.

Zimbabweans are not choosing it; they are enduring it.

Trust in a currency cannot be manufactured through press statements, projections, or radio jingles.

Zimbabweans are a traumatised people, shaped by some of the most devastating monetary catastrophes in modern history.

At my mother’s passing in October last year, we found wads of old local currencies in her bedroom—thousands, millions, billions, trillions.

Money she once believed might buy her something.

Money rendered utterly useless.

Like millions of others, she had watched inflation move faster than human comprehension, leaving her holding billions that could not buy a loaf of bread.

She also lived through the early 2000s, when savings, pensions, insurance policies, and investments were wiped out almost overnight.

A lifetime of work erased, as if it had never existed.

Do the likes of Mushayavanhu honestly believe that such deep, rational trauma can be undone by optimistic projections and media hype?

Even if the central bank were to amass the traditional three months of import cover to back the ZiG, that alone would not guarantee stability—especially under any attempt at a mono-currency regime.

Currency stability is not just about reserves; it is about confidence.

And confidence does not come from coercion or propaganda.

As long as the people themselves do not trust and willingly embrace the ZiG, no amount of gold, minerals, or billions in reserves will save it.

The authorities have serious work to do.

But the starting point must be honesty.

Stop treating Zimbabweans as fools.

Stop telling them they trust a currency when their lived reality proves otherwise.

The ZiG is not winning.

Zimbabweans are simply doing what they have always done in the face of economic mismanagement: adapting to survive, even if that means discarding a currency they neither want nor believe in.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/