A nation of vendors is not a nation on the rise

Let us not fool ourselves! 

One of the most dangerous narratives taking root in Zimbabwe today is the claim that the Mnangagwa administration's support for the informal sector is a sign of empowerment and economic development. 

To directly receive articles from Tendai Ruben Mbofana, please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08

Nearly every day, the nation is treated to images of government officials presiding over events where they distribute or announce small "empowerment" initiatives - such as revolving funds, chicks, seeds, livelihood inputs, and occasionally vehicles — usually targeted at youths, women, war veterans, or ZANU-PF affiliates.

The state media sells this as evidence of a leadership that champions entrepreneurship and grassroots economic transformation. 

Yet this storyline collapses under even the slightest scrutiny. 

What is being packaged as empowerment is, in reality, a stark admission of economic collapse. 

It is the textbook signature of a dysfunctional economy whose citizens have been pushed into the margins, forced to survive in an informal, precarious, and unregulated parallel world because the formal economy has all but vanished.

To understand this, one must first appreciate the role of informality in any functioning economy. 

In countries like the United Kingdom or France, only between 5 to 10 percent of the labour force engages in informal work. 

These are mostly side hustles, artistic crafts, niche services, or hobby-driven micro-enterprises — not survivalist occupations like street food vending, backyard chicken or egg production, informal car repair and welding, or making home-made soaps and detergents.

The same applies in countries such as South Africa and Botswana, where between 30 and 45 percent of the workforce is informal. 

This is still high for upper-middle-income economies, but the majority of people remain in formal, regulated jobs that offer a salary, benefits, social protection, and predictable income. 

Informality, in these contexts, is peripheral. 

It complements the formal economy; it does not replace it.

Zimbabwe is the opposite. 

With an estimated 90 percent of the population surviving through informal activities—street vending, backyard chicken projects, car repairs, welding, home-made detergents, tailoring, food vending, and artisanal trades—we have crossed the threshold into economic pathology. 

This is not empowerment. 

It is desperation. 

It is not development. 

It is a slow-motion collapse. 

No country can credibly claim to be rising while turning its citizens into hawkers and backyard producers. 

A modern economy is built on industries, jobs, factories, services, innovation, and investment—not millions scrambling to sell tomatoes on pavements or repair vehicles under makeshift sheds.

A functional economy is characterised by a strong and expanding formal sector. 

It creates jobs that come with health insurance, pensions, paid leave, and decent wages. 

It has productive industries—manufacturing, mining, agriculture, services—operating at scale, generating value, paying taxes, and driving national development. 

It has a government that collects revenue from a broad tax base and reinvests it into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, water systems, power generation, and social services. 

It has predictable regulations, property rights, credit access, and savings mechanisms. 

Most importantly, it is an economy where the average worker earns above the poverty line and can afford basic necessities without relying on handouts.

Zimbabwe has none of this. 

Instead, we have a regime that has normalised dysfunction. 

Instead of creating conditions for industry to grow, the state now parades handouts as a development model. 

But a nation cannot be developed through the distribution of chicks and seeds to party-aligned groups. 

It cannot modernise through backyard soap-making workshops. 

We cannot build a prosperous middle class by cutting ribbons at informal vending clusters. 

These activities may keep families alive in desperate times, but they cannot lift millions out of poverty. 

They are survivalist - designed to avert starvation, not transform livelihoods.

The government knows this. 

That is why these supposed empowerment programmes are heavily politicised. 

They are not designed to develop the country; they are designed to reward loyalty and secure votes. 

The beneficiaries are overwhelmingly ZANU-PF supporters, selected through patronage structures that ensure political returns. 

Even then, the majority of those in these groups report never receiving the funds or materials promised. 

In many cases, the money evaporates long before it reaches the ground. 

The few who do receive something often find the value too small to meaningfully change their circumstances. 

A US$200 revolving fund or a batch of 50 chicks is not economic transformation; it is a stop-gap measure that keeps people hanging by a thread.

Beyond the superficial optics, there is a more insidious economic consequence. 

The informal sector does not pay taxes. 

It is largely unregulated and operates outside the fiscal system. 

This means government revenue continues to shrink. 

As the formal sector collapses - from manufacturing to retail to mining to agriculture—the tax base contracts, leaving the state scrambling to extract more from fewer workers and businesses. 

This is one reason Zimbabwe has some of the highest taxes in Africa: the burden is borne by a small, over-taxed formal minority. 

Meanwhile, millions in the informal sector contribute little or nothing to public coffers, not because they are unwilling, but because they earn so little or unregulated that they simply cannot.

This has profound implications for national development. 

With a collapsing revenue base, the state struggles to fund hospitals, build schools, pay civil servants, rehabilitate infrastructure, or invest in social services. 

The little that is collected is often diverted toward political patronage - financing "Zvigananda," buying cars for chiefs, distributing party-branded trinkets, and sustaining the machinery of loyalty. 

Thus, the cycle continues: poverty feeds informality, informality shrinks state revenue, shrinking revenue fuels more poverty, and the government responds by distributing more handouts that entrench informality even further.

The claim that these handouts represent empowerment is therefore not only misleading but dangerously dishonest. 

True empowerment lifts people out of poverty; it does not trap them at its edge. 

A person who survives by selling vegetables on the street, repairing cars in a backyard workshop, or making home-made soap is not economically secure. 

Their income is unpredictable, seasonal, and vulnerable to weather, police raids, municipal evictions, and market saturation.

Most such traders earn less than US$5.50 a day in net income - the lower-middle-income poverty line - after paying operating expenses such as the cost of goods, materials, tools, feed, or other inputs required to run their small businesses.

That is not development; it is survival. 

It is a life lived on the margins, without access to credit, medical care, insurance, or pensions.

The Mnangagwa administration has attempted to mask economic failure by romanticising informality, celebrating it as innovation, resilience, or entrepreneurship. 

There is nothing wrong with entrepreneurship - in a healthy economy, it is a powerful driver of growth. 

But what we have in Zimbabwe is not entrepreneurial opportunity - it is economic compulsion. 

People are not choosing to become street vendors because the environment is ripe with opportunity. 

They are doing so because the formal economy has collapsed and the state has failed in its fundamental duty to create jobs.

The truth is simple: a nation cannot develop on the back of vending stalls and backyard workshops. 

Until Zimbabwe restores its industrial base, grows formal employment, broadens its tax base, and builds strong public institutions, it will remain trapped in this spiral of survival. 

And as long as the government continues to pretend that poverty-driven informality is a form of empowerment, the country will continue to sink deeper into economic stagnation.

Handouts may prevent starvation, but they do not build a nation. 

Empowerment comes from opportunity, not charity. 

And Zimbabwe deserves far better than a leadership that confuses the two.

© 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/