Provision of Business Development Services Small Enterprises in the Zimbabwe Construction Sector

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is implementing a sub-regional project on promoting labour rights in the construction sector in collaboration with the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The project will pilot interventions in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa with a view towards sharing good practices, tools and approaches with the wider SADC community. Interventions will aim to improve working conditions for vulnerable workers, with a focus on women and youth, and to support and incentivise small enterprises in the sector to provide better working conditions, adopt better business processes, and ultimately increase their labour productivity. 

While available data on the construction sector is limited, the construction sector in Zimbabwe is projected to grow over the next five years, with trends signalling intensifying competition in terms of the number of firms entering the market, as well as a growing demand generated through renovation projects, new building construction and other civil projects such as dams and other large infrastructure projects. Sector growth is being primarily financed through increasing public investments, as well as the presence of a large customer base and flows of foreign direct investments (FDIs). The government is by far the largest funder and employer in the sector – in 2022, an estimated 70 per cent of construction works were publicly funded . 

Construction activity is concentrated in the Harare Metropolitan Province, which, according to respondents, accounted for an estimated 25 per cent% of investments in the sector in 2021.

While there are enterprises of all sizes operating in the construction sector, large-scale building and infrastructure works are dominated by a limited number of large-scale contractors, as most public sector awards are in higher grades. These large-scale contractors oversee the project and execute some parts of the contract but subcontract a large portion of the work to smaller enterprises that work as subcontractors. Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) make up the majority of contractors in Zimbabwe. 

In this context, the ILO seeking to contract up to two registered organizations providing business services to small enterprises in Zimbabwe to work with the project to pilot approaches and services to support small, construction-sector enterprises to provide better working conditions, adopt better business processes, and access markets.