Zimbabwe’s Quiet Economic Adaptation — And the Risk of Mistaking Survival for Stability

Zimbabwe’s economy shows resilience through adaptation, but prolonged survival strategies risk masking stagnation, weakening institutions and eroding long-term growth prospects (image source)

Zimbabweans have always been adaptive. It is one of our most cited national traits, invoked with pride whenever formal systems falter and improvisation fills the gaps.

From cross-border trading to informal currency hedging, from side hustles to parallel markets, survival has become a finely tuned national skill.

But adaptation, when prolonged, can become dangerous—especially when it begins to mask structural decline.

What Zimbabwe is currently experiencing is not economic recovery in the conventional sense. It is economic accommodation: a collective recalibration of expectations downward, paired with an impressive capacity to endure conditions that would be politically or socially intolerable elsewhere. This distinction matters, because accommodation can coexist with stagnation for a very long time.

At street level, the economy appears busy. Money circulates. Shops open and close with startling speed. New businesses emerge weekly, particularly in retail, transport, and digital services. On the surface, this activity suggests resilience, even dynamism.

Beneath the movement, however, lies fragility.

Much of today’s economic activity is not growth-oriented but defensive. It is designed to preserve purchasing power rather than expand it; to manage risk rather than create value. A significant share of entrepreneurial energy is spent not on innovation, but on arbitrage—between currencies, pricing systems, regulatory gaps, and time.

This is rational behaviour in an environment where predictability is scarce. But it has consequences.

The first casualty of prolonged accommodation is long-term planning. Businesses operate with shortened horizons.

Households think in weeks rather than years. Investment decisions are shaped by exit strategies instead of expansion plans. Capital becomes mobile, cautious, and easily unsettled.

The second casualty is institutional trust.

When citizens learn that personal networks outperform formal processes, the incentive to engage institutions weakens.

Compliance becomes conditional. Taxes are paid selectively. Regulations are negotiated informally. Over time, this corrodes the very systems required for sustainable economic development.

Perhaps the most under-discussed impact, however, is psychological.

Zimbabwe’s middle-income professionals—the teachers, nurses, engineers, junior executives, and civil servants—are increasingly living in a state of managed anxiety. They are employed, but insecure. Educated, but under-rewarded.

Functional, but fatigued.

Their lives are dominated less by aspiration than by calculation: school fees, medical cover, transport, rent, currency exposure. Ambitions contract quietly. Not because drive has disappeared, but because uncertainty punishes optimism.

This group matters disproportionately. Globally, middle-income earners form the tax base, anchor consumer demand, and provide social stability. When they disengage—economically or psychologically—the entire system loses balance.

Zimbabwe has not yet confronted the full social consequences of this withdrawal. But it is accumulating.

One reason the alarm bells remain muted is the absence of dramatic collapse. There is no singular crisis moment. Instead, there is slow erosion—the kind that allows societies to adapt incrementally, until adaptation itself becomes the norm.

This is where policy risk emerges.

Governments can easily mistake endurance for endorsement. The absence of protest is read as acceptance. The persistence of informal activity is interpreted as economic vitality. But survival strategies are not development strategies.

Real economic progress requires more than circulation. It requires productivity gains, value addition, skills utilisation, and institutional reliability. It requires an environment where risk is rewarded, not merely managed.

For business leaders, the challenge is equally complex.

Operating in Zimbabwe today demands agility, but also discipline. The temptation is to optimise exclusively for volatility—quick returns, fast exits, minimal exposure. Yet businesses anchored solely in short-term logic struggle to scale, formalise, or attract serious capital.

There remains space—albeit narrow—for firms that invest in systems, build credibility, and think beyond the next currency cycle. These businesses may not grow fastest, but they grow strongest.

For policymakers, the task is harder, but unavoidable.

Stability cannot be communicated; it must be experienced. Confidence cannot be announced; it must be earned. Economic actors respond less to speeches than to consistency—across taxation, currency policy, procurement, and regulation.

Zimbabwe does not lack ideas. It lacks predictability.

Until that changes, adaptation will continue to substitute for growth, and endurance will be mistaken for success.

The danger is not that Zimbabweans will fail to survive.

They always do.

The danger is that we may survive so efficiently, for so long, that we forget what genuine progress looks like—and lose the urgency to demand it.

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