Startup ecosystem in Zimbabwe: Innovation Exodus the lesser known brain drain

The potential of Zimbabwe being an innovation exporter is dwindling because the country's startup ecosystem is moving elsewhere...

“We must cultivate our garden” was written centuries ago by Voltaire in his book Candide and, for whatever reason, resonated with Trevor Ncube’s recently concluded Ideas Festival. If, for some reason, you haven’t read the book I urge you to because there is wisdom hidden in a tale that is woven into a series of truly remarkable events. 

One of the most important lessons the book tries to teach, at least in my opinion, is consequence… The definition of the word has a negative connotation because whenever you hear “Face the consequences” it implies that something bad will happen. However, I find the philosophical explanation of the word to be more interesting, and in that context, it is simply everything the action brings about, including the action itself.

This is important because there was a particularly explosive panel at the Ideas Festival that involved three startup founders. The first is Ryan Katayi, founder of FarmHut an Agritech startup that is building a credit scoring system for farmers. Second, on the panel, was Gugulethu Siso the founder and CEO of Thumeza, a fintech company that provides liquidity to the logistics sector through invoice financing for small-scale transporters. Lastly, Victor Mapunga, the CEO of FlexID an enterprise building digital identity solutions for the undocumented in Africa set the stage for how startups have been viewed as entities of no consequence in the current business policy framework in Zimbabwe.

This has led all of these companies led by Zimbabweans to seek their fortunes elsewhere and the reasons for them doing so were completely preventable…