Positioning Zimbabwe as the skills hub of Africa: Using planned skilled labour migration to drive development

For meaningful development to occur, countries must adopt strategies that are tailored to their specific realities and structural challenges. There is no one-size-fits-all model for development.

What has worked for one country may not necessarily work for another, but what is clear is that successful nations identify their unique strengths and deliberately build development strategies around them.

China provides a powerful example. One of the pillars of its development strategy was the introduction of the One-Child Policy in 1979. This policy restricted most families to having only one child, with the aim of slowing population growth.

By limiting population expansion, China was able to channel resources more efficiently—investing heavily in education, health, infrastructure, and industrialisation.

Although the policy had social and ethical consequences, its role in accelerating economic growth and lifting millions out of poverty is widely acknowledged.

It reduced pressure on public services and allowed the state to plan long-term with greater precision. In this way, population control became part of the engine that powered China’s development.

Mauritius offers another instructive example. As a small island state with limited natural resources, Mauritius could easily have been constrained by its geography. Instead, it turned this potential disadvantage into an advantage by deliberately developing tourism as a major economic pillar.

By harnessing its natural beauty, stable governance, and strategic planning, Mauritius built a tourism-driven economy that supports employment, foreign currency inflows, and national growth.

Similarly, several Asian countries have leveraged their cultural capital, including beauty, hospitality, and service-oriented skills, to attract global attention and economic opportunities.

These examples illustrate a central lesson: development follows when countries identify and intentionally exploit what they already have.

Zimbabwe’s untapped advantage lies in its people.

Within Africa and across the world, Zimbabweans have long been associated with education, intelligence, professionalism, and leadership.

Even as the national economy has deteriorated and the education infrastructure has suffered from underfunding, brain drain, and inequality, one thing has remained remarkably consistent: Zimbabweans continue to excel wherever they go.

They win academic awards, rise into leadership positions within companies, and are widely recognised as skilled, reliable, and adaptable workers.

This reputation cannot be explained solely by the formal education system. In fact, the education system itself is currently plagued by serious challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, lack of equitable access, overcrowding, and the migration of skilled teachers.

The persistence of Zimbabwean excellence despite these failures suggests something deeper—an inherent human capital advantage that remains largely unstructured and underutilised.

Zimbabwe must begin to treat its intelligent population as a strategic national resource.

Human capital—particularly skilled labour—is one of the most valuable exports in the modern global economy. Zimbabwe’s educated and trainable population represents a renewable resource that can be deliberately developed, packaged, and exported to serve global labour markets, while generating revenue for the country through structured diaspora remittances and partnerships.

Diaspora remittances already play a significant role in Zimbabwe’s economy, yet they remain largely informal and unplanned. What is needed are short-, medium-, and long-term national strategies that intentionally link education, skills training, migration pathways, and remittance flows.

Skills migration should not be accidental or chaotic; it should be planned, ethical, and mutually beneficial.

A clear starting point is higher education and skills training.

There is a glaring mismatch between demand and access in key degrees that are globally marketable, such as social work and nursing. These are professions with high international demand and clear migration pathways.

Yet in Zimbabwe, students with strong academic results—sometimes as high as 10 points at Form 6—fail to secure places in these programmes.

While university prospectuses may state that degrees like social work require as little as two points, in practice universities admit only the highest-performing students, often filling a small class of 20 students with candidates who have 15 points or more.

This creates systemic exclusion that is not academically justified. A programme that requires two points does not suddenly become a 15-point programme simply because capacity is limited.

The real problem is not student quality; it is institutional capacity.

When more than 10,000 applicants compete for 20 places, the issue is not merit but an inadequate and exclusionary system. The solution lies in expanding university capacity through multiple intakes, parallel evening programmes, block-release models, and the deliberate scaling of high-demand degrees.

Universities should not have only one intake per year when national demand and global labour shortages are so evident.

If Zimbabwe cannot currently provide sufficient jobs for its youth, then it must intentionally prepare them for economies that can—while ensuring that Zimbabwe benefits in return.

Evidence consistently shows that migrants rarely sever ties with their countries of origin. On the contrary, they maintain strong emotional, financial, and social connections.

Migrants often feel a deep sense of pride in their homeland and a desire to uplift their families and communities. This makes skills export not a loss, but an investment—provided it is managed properly.

Zimbabwe should therefore position itself as the Skills Hub of Africa, with government-led partnerships that facilitate the training and ethical export of skilled labour across all fields, including STEM disciplines and social sciences such as nursing and social work.

These partnerships must be transparent, regulated, and linked to remittance systems, skills upgrading, and eventual return or circular migration opportunities.

The path forward is clear. Zimbabwe does not lack intelligence. It lacks strategy.

By recognising human capital as a national asset, expanding access to skills training, and aligning education with global labour markets, Zimbabwe can transform its greatest strength—its people—into a sustainable engine for development.

The human brain, when properly harnessed, is more valuable than any mineral resource. Zimbabwe already has it. What remains is the political will and strategic vision to use it.

Dr Chiedza Simbo is a Founder and Consultant of Chiedza Immigration and Refugee Consultancy. She is an endorsed Global Talent by the British Academy and is based in the United Kingdom. She travels between South Africa, Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom. She consults of South Africa and United Kingdom Visas. She is a former law lecturer for 3 South African Universities and former Director at ZWLA. She is open to partnerships and collaborations with government and civil society and can be contacted on [email protected]