When Outsiders See Opportunity Where Locals See Only Survival

A reflective opinion on Zimbabwe’s informal economy, exploring why foreign traders see opportunity where locals see survival, and what this reveals about narratives, migration and economic imagination (image source)

In the past fortnight, I have had the unexpected pleasure of buying airtime and small trinkets in Harare’s CBD from a pair of young Portuguese-speaking men from Mozambique. Their assessment of Zimbabwe was simple and almost disarming: this is a land of opportunity.

For many locals, that sounds either naïve or provocative. Opportunity is not how most Zimbabweans describe life in an economy defined by currency instability, informalisation and the steady erosion of formal employment. Yet for these two young traders, Harare is not a crisis zone. It is a market. That contrast deserves reflection.

Opportunity is always relative. What feels like stagnation to those inside a system can look like open terrain to those arriving from the outside. In much of the region, informal trading is more tightly policed, entry costs are higher, and competition is fiercer. In Harare, despite all the dysfunction, the streets remain porous, the rules elastic, and demand for everyday goods constant. To outsiders, this is not merely disorder. It is space.

Zimbabwe’s informal economy has evolved into one of the most adaptive survival systems in Southern Africa. Mobile-money workarounds, cross-border sourcing networks, street-level distribution chains — these are not just symptoms of collapse. They are evidence of economic intelligence under pressure. Foreign traders often see this clearly. Many locals, exhausted by years of uncertainty, no longer do.

With more than two-thirds of the workforce now operating outside formal employment, informality is no longer the exception in Zimbabwe — it is the economy. The tragedy is that we continue to narrate it as failure, while others approach it as terrain. This is where we may be missing the point.

For Zimbabweans, informality often feels like a personal indictment — proof that the promise of stability slipped away. For migrants, it is simply the market as it exists. They arrive without nostalgia for what Zimbabwe once was. They see only what it is: a dense consumer space with unmet needs and relatively low barriers to entry.

Locals carry the emotional weight of decline. Outsiders carry only calculation.

There is also the psychology of proximity. When you live inside a prolonged crisis, you stop seeing its edges. You see only its centre — the hardship, the exhaustion, the constant improvisation. But those just outside the circle see something else: circulation, trade, possibility. Zimbabweans often look to South Africa or the UK and see opportunity because distance makes hope easier. Mozambicans, Malawians and Congolese increasingly look at Zimbabwe in much the same way.

This does not mean the economy is quietly thriving. It means that even in constrained systems, niches exist — and those with fewer expectations are quicker to occupy them.

Another uncomfortable truth is that many locals are overqualified for the economy they inhabit. A graduate selling airtime feels like failure. A migrant selling airtime feels like progress. The difference is not income. It is narrative.

Zimbabweans measure themselves against a lost middle-class stability. Foreign traders measure themselves against yesterday’s poverty.

So where, exactly, are we missing it?

Perhaps in our tendency to equate opportunity only with formality — offices, payslips, contracts, titles. The economy we have today rewards flexibility, speed and tolerance for risk more than certificates. Outsiders arrive already calibrated for this reality. Locals resist it, hoping for the return of an economy that may not come back in the same form.

Perhaps also in our habit of seeing crisis but not circulation. Money still moves in Harare. Goods still change hands. Demand still exists — for food, airtime, data, clothing, transport and entertainment. The margins are thin, but they are real. Migrants survive not because Zimbabwe is easy, but because they accept small wins as wins.

There is something quietly instructive in being told by a foreigner that your struggling country is full of opportunity. It forces an uncomfortable reappraisal — not of the economy alone, but of our expectations of it.

Zimbabwe is not simply a land of lost opportunity. It is a land of different opportunity — smaller, messier, informal, unglamorous.

Outsiders understand this instinctively. Locals, burdened by memory and disappointment, often overlook it.

And yet every day in the CBD, opportunity is being bought and sold — one airtime voucher, one trinket, one small risk at a time.

The real question is not why foreigners see opportunity here. It is why our policies, our narratives, and our economic imagination still behave as if this informal economy does not exist.

Simbarashe Namusi is a peace, leadership and governance scholar as well as a media expert. He writes in his personal capacity.