Formalisation must not become exclusion

ZIMBABWE’S latest push to formalise the informal economy arrives at a moment when the country can no longer afford policy slogans that sound progressive but fail the test of lived reality.

For many Zimbabweans, especially young graduates, informal work is not a choice born of preference but a survival strategy born of economic failure.

In a country where formal employment has shrunk dramatically, where salaries have been eroded by inflation and currency instability, and where even well-educated citizens have had to turn to vending, cross-border trading, tuckshops and small service businesses to survive, any serious policy on formalisation must begin with one truth: the informal economy is not a nuisance to be eliminated, but the real operating system of the Zimbabwean economy.

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