Zimbabwe’s Online Procurement Revolution: A cure for corruption or a digital band-aid?

The Zimbabwean government recently shared their budget for 2024 and one sections that caught my eye whilst scrolling through the 250-page document was the country’s shift to an online public procurement system.

In 2016 - when the US$ was still the most used currency, Zimbabwe was said to be losing US$1 billion annually to corruption. At the time this was nearly 25% of the country’s proposed US$4 national budget. Zimbabwe’s corruption issues are well documented. The country ranks 157/180 countries and has a corruption perception index (CPI) score of 23/100 according to Transparency International. Any news of attempts to thwart corruption by the government are potentially life-changing if implemented correctly which is why the new eGovernment Procurement system is a welcome announcement.

Weaknesses of the old public procurement system

The first area of weakness and the one the new electronic Government Procurement (eGP) directly addresses is the lack of adoption of digital tools in procurement. A research paper titled, Dynamics of Patronage Politics and the Tendering Process at Zimbabwe’s State Procurement Board noted that bringing the process up to speed would save time and money:

a potential supplier can take several weeks to complete the tender registration process as heaps of files appeared burdensome to work on them under a restricted timeframe.

Anonymous survey respondent Dynamics of Patronage Politics and the Tendering Process at Zimbabwe’s State Procurement Board