IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

A senior Zimbabwe Government official said when opening a workshop to develop an e-Government framework and implementation plan for the Government of Zimbabwe recently in Harare.

Chief Secretary to The President and Cabinet, Dr. Misheck Sibanda said, holistically and ultimately, e-Government aims at enhancing access to and delivery of government and other services to benefit the citizens.

Finance Ministry allocates US$17m towards ICT, with specific attention to internet access.

Zimbabwe finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa has allocated US$17.1 million towards ICT targets including greater internet access in both rural and urban areas.

Information and Communication Technology minister Supa Mandiwanzira yesterday disclosed that government’s economic intelligence data was being handled by a foreign-controlled company, EOH Holdings, an arrangement he described as a security risk.

He said EOH, a Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company, had acquired 49% shares from local firm Twenty Third Century Systems and its subsidiaries. The system allows businesses to track customer and business interactions and data management programmes.

Zimbabwe will have a new law by year-end, which will decentralise purchasing to procurement management units in government departments, parastatals, State-owned enterprises and local authorities in far reaching reforms meant to ensure efficiency and quality service delivery.

Solomon Mhlanga, senior principal director in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC), told journalists attending a procurement and contracting out workshop in Kariba yesterday the reforms would transform the State Procurement Board (SPB) into an authority responsible for setting standards and guidelines, as well as performing a monitoring and evaluation role over procurement.

Zimbabwe is building New Harare, a smart city on the outskirts of Harare that will be the new seat of government and have around 300 dwellings. A big money project to install a cybersecurity and biometric surveillance system throughout it is coming up against sharp criticism from digital rights activists.

The critics are accusing the country’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa of attempts to transform the nation into a surveillance state.

ePassports, also known as “biometric passports” contain an electronic chip that is encoded with surname, given name, date of birth, place of birth and gender information. It also includes a digital picture of the bearer’s face. Signatures are not reproduced on the chip.

The Zimbabwe government believes that the introduction and mass production of the new travel document will reduce the price of the document. Currently, an ordinary Zimbabwean passport costs US$50 while other regional countries charge less than US$30.

• Government backs multimillion-dollar Zim Cyber City
• Rights groups question project's surveillance ambitions
• Smart cities stir privacy fears from Egypt to Saudi Arabia

In a fertile stretch of fields and farms dubbed New Harare, Zimbabwe is building a high-tech "cyber city" a world away from the traffic-clogged streets and overcrowded slums of the country's nearby capital.

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Wednesday launched the national Information Communication Technology (ICT) policy to underpin economic growth through use of ICTs.

The policy puts in place institutional and legal frameworks aimed at promoting growth of the ICT sector and the economy at large, Mnangagwa said.

Zimbabwe’s political leaders have a remedy for the collapse of the capital Harare: Build a new “cybercity” with as much as $60 billion of other people’s money.

The development in Mount Hampden, 11 miles northeast of Harare, is slated to be the site of the national parliament, headquarters of the central bank, the high and supreme courts, mineral auction centers, a stock exchange, a presidential palace and luxury villas.

As you may know, the president of the country, Robert Mugabe, and the ICT minster launched the first phase of the deployment of e-Learning facilities at Zimbabwe’s primary and secondary schools last week. “After Tsholotsho we will now be going into the various districts. We’re looking at at least a thousand schools before December [this year]” said Chamisa.

Additionally government policy is subject to the whims of the electoral cycle and the politics of the day, a fact which is even more pertinent in Zimbabwe’s current GPA dispensation.

Masvingo MP Tongai Matutu called for the introduction of biometrics, lodging a motion in parliament to this effect in 2010.

The issue was raised again in March last year by Pishai Muchauraya who said though it had been discussed with Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, nothing concrete had materialised.

This has spurred the development of the broadband transmission, which has seen so many local and regional Internet Service Providers strategically positioning and competing amongst themselves, to have a share in this technological development.

The term broadband can have a wide range of meanings in different contexts, and it has undergone substantial shifts. According to Wikipedia, the term can mean responding to, or operating on a wide band of frequencies.

Views across the board said voters should be biometrically enrolled for the country’s next elections, due late this year or early next year.

Biometric voter registration has software that captures citizens’ data, including fingerprints and a digital photograph, directly in the field. In Zimbabwe far placed villagers in remote areas usually travel long distances just to register to vote. At times many people miss out on registering because of the high costs involved in travelling.

According to a report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), it revealed that some 230 million jobs in Sub-Saharan Africa will require some level of digital skills by 2030.

Forbes also predicts that 85% of jobs that will be available in 2030 haven’t yet been invented, as the work humans do will continually shift due to the fact that most jobs will become obsolete due to the emergence of new ones.

The  Zimbabwe Digital Economy Diagnostic, a new report developed by the World Bank, finds that its digital financial services are the strongest foundation for the further development of the digital economy in the country.

Among Zimbabwe’s key strengths is the widely used digital payment system, through which 96 percent of all transactions in the country are transacted, and which Government uses extensively for its core business.

The establishment of an electronic procurement system to enhance transparency, efficiency and credibility of the country’s sloppy procurement processes has been hampered by funding shortfalls from external development partners, three years after the project was mooted, 263Chat Business has learnt.

In 2017, Zimbabwe contracted a British consulting firm, Crown Agency with the funding support of World Bank to develop an electronic procurement strategy which was completed in 2018 as a precursor to the setting up of an electronic system.

Government is expected to rake in millions of dollars following the enactment of a law that requires all registered companies in Zimbabwe to re-register by March next year.

All existing companies which were registered before February 22, 2020 are required to re-register with the Registrar of Companies in line with the new Companies and Other Business Act [Chapter 24:31].

In an interview, Minister Chamisa said his ministry's vision was to make Zimbabwe an information society for it to compete on the global standards.

"People from all walks of life should be exposed and have access to information technology for the country to develop.

As the year 2015 comes to an end most people will remember it for the activity around ICT legislation and government’s involvement in the shaping of issues around technology.

Infrastructure sharing was catalysed by a 90-day ultimatum, discussions around the Cyber Crime Bill which was initially thought to be years away was brought forward and the government claimed a bigger stake in local telecoms. We even had final discussions and recommendations around the national ICT Policy.