ZIDA — Zimbabwe's One-Stop Investment Agency and Its Uneven Path to Faster Approvals

The Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA) was established under the ZIDA Act, gazetted 7 February 2020, merging the former Zimbabwe Investment Authority, the Zimbabwe Special Economic Zones Authority and the Office of the President and Cabinet's diaspora investment directorate into a single body with a One Stop Investment Services Centre (OSISC) covering investment analysis, company and tax registration, licensing, utility connections and aftercare.
ZIDA publishes quarterly investment reports. Zimbabwean business media (Newsday) reported ZIDA approving approximately US$1.59 billion in investment in the second quarter of 2023 alone, with mining leading the sectoral breakdown; a separate report (Herald) recorded roughly US$1.2 billion in third-quarter 2023 approvals. Half-year 2023 figures show 287 approved investors — 130 in mining, 62 in services, 55 in manufacturing, 12 in energy, 11 in construction and 8 in agriculture — with foreign capital (US$1.757bn) far outweighing local capital (US$78.1m) of the US$1.836bn approved by mid-2023.
Caution: an independent legal review by the trade-law centre tralac found that, despite creating the one-stop centre, 'the ZIDA Act does not provide for' online applications, simplified permits or defined statutory approval timelines — meaning the promised speed of the one-stop shop rests on administrative practice rather than a binding legal guarantee. The approved-investment figures are agency-published quarterly totals rather than independently audited disbursement data, and the strong tilt toward mining/gold projects (headline approvals included single projects worth US$6.94bn and US$1.4bn) means the aggregate figures are concentrated in a capital-intensive sector rather than broad-based company growth.

Read the full analysis: https://zidainvest.com/