Zimbabwe’s economy, in numbers.
A living, quarterly portrait of a $30 billion diaspora-fed economy — what it sells, what it buys, where the money actually comes from, and what the published numbers quietly leave out.
Chapter 01 · GDP by sector
Where the money lives
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Zimbabwe is often imagined as a mining story. The numbers tell a different one. The largest single contributor to the economy is the small-trade economy — spaza shops, market stalls, wholesalers — classified by ZimStat as Wholesale and retail trade. Mining is in the same league. Manufacturing is shrinking. Below is the latest quarter's contribution by sector, in millions of US dollars.
Sector ranking — latest quarter
| # | Sector | Value (USD) | Share of GDP | YoY change |
|---|
Source: ZimStat, Quarterly Gross Domestic Product Tables. Download CSV · Public domain.
Chapter 02 · Goods trade
The trade gap
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For most of its modern history Zimbabwe imported far more than it exported. Then, in 2024, the goods trade balance quietly flipped — lithium, gold and tobacco exports finally outran the import bill. The shaded area below is the gap between the two lines, quarter by quarter, in millions of US dollars.
Source: Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe / ZimStat, Balance of Payments. Goods only — services excluded.
Chapter 03 · Remittances
The diaspora dividend
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Personal transfers — money sent home by Zimbabweans living abroad — have grown into one of the country's largest reliable inflows. The official numbers below are the recorded transfers only; the true figure is widely believed to be higher once informal channels (cross-border traders, cash couriers) are counted.
Source: Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe / ZimStat, Balance of Payments — Personal Transfers.
Chapter 04 · The two great sectors
Mining vs Agriculture
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For most of the last decade, agriculture was Zimbabwe's largest productive sector — tobacco, maize, horticulture, the annual rainfall lottery. Then lithium happened. Below: the two sectors plotted against each other quarter by quarter.
Source: ZimStat, Quarterly GDP — Agriculture & Mining Sectors.
Chapter 05 · Sector composition
Services rising
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Stacked over time, the top six sectors show a quieter trend: finance, ICT and wholesale trade are slowly taking share from manufacturing. Zimbabwe is becoming a services economy — not by design, but because the productive base is hollowing out under it.
Source: ZimStat, Quarterly Gross Domestic Product Tables. Top six sectors by latest-quarter contribution.
Chapter 06 · External balance
The missing money
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Every Balance of Payments has a line called Net Errors and Omissions — the difference between what should add up and what actually does. In most economies it is small noise. In Zimbabwe's, it is a large, persistent figure: a quiet statistical admission that the informal economy moves real money the books cannot fully see.
Source: Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Balance of Payments — Current Account & Net Errors & Omissions.
