Job Description

Background
Mining immensely contributes to foreign currency generation, government revenue, public infrastructure, on shoring of manufacturing capabilities, employment, and skills development. However, limited transparency and accountability in the governance of mineral resources is undermining the capacity to optimize mining contribution to transformative socio-economic development in line with the aspirations of the National Development Strategy (NDS2). On one hand, government and civil society perception is that the mining is not contributing its fair share of government revenue. On the other hand, some large mining companies allege that they are significantly contributors to the government revenue, but this picture is blurred by weak fiscal transparency.

Under the National Development Strategy (NDS) 1, the Government conceded that lack of transparency and accountability in mining fiscal regimes and overgenerous tax incentives limited the capacity for government to generate a fair share of revenue from the mining sector. The current Economic Blue Print, the National Development Strategy (NDS2) incorporates transparency as a critical strategy to improve governance, enhance fiscal revenues, and ensure the prudent use of public resources. The Government of Zimbabwe made a strong policy commitment to come up with a broader mining tax revenue transparency policy framework twice in the last 2 decades. The first huge positive policy turn was the Government’s decision to adopt the Zimbabwe Mining Revenue Transparency Initiative (ZMRTI) in 2011, which was meant to be the domestic version of the global Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). The major objectives of the ZMRTI were centred around; creating a multi stakeholder process to promote dialogue and build trust, generating independently – reconciled information on significant mining revenue flows and payments for public dissemination and using the information as evidence to inform policy reforms designed to achieve good governance of the nation’s mineral resources. All this was meant to be a stepping stone to Zimbabwe joining the broad EITI standard. However, this initiative was short lived and never implemented. The second significant policy commitment on mining revenue transparency was made in 2018, where through the 2019 National Budget, the Government expressed interest to join EITI, which is a global best practice for promoting open and accountable governance of the mining, oil and gas sectors. As with the Zimbabwe Mining Revenue Transparency Initiative (ZMRTI), there was no meaningful progress on the commitment to join EITI with the Government of Zimbabwe raising the issue on the continued imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe’s state entities such as the Mineral Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ), as a key disincentive to EITI subscription.

Ever since then, the discussion of on joining EITI lost attraction and prioritisation on Government’s policy radar. Despite this setback, mining tax transparency has been gradually regaining currency and vibrance in the Government’s state institutions and the private sector’s sustainability policies. Some of the key progressive steps taken include; the adoption of the ESG risk management strategy by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) which resulted in improved revenue disclosures and consistency in its quarterly and semi-annual and yearly revenue performance reports. Other State Owned Entities (SOEs) have also followed suit by adopting ESG and corporate governance strategies that are mandating them to publicly disclose mining related revenue information. These state institutions include, MMCZ, Fidelity Gold Printers and Mutapa Investment Fund (MIF). The regaining of reforms on addressing mining tax transparency risks through adoption of ESG policies is happening in the context where State Owned Enterprises such as MMCZ in 2024 are no longer on USA Sanctions and the Government’s new development thrust, under the NDS2, focuses on derisking the country’s investment climate, building international trust and gaining access to competitive global markets. The consistency in the implementation of the Open Budget Survey (OBS) by Ministry of Finance and Economic Development is also a key step towards improving mineral revenue transparency. On the other private sector’s side, large MNCs operating in the mining sector, have been voluntarily disclosing their fiscal transfers and expenditure to the central government and local authorities through publication of sustainability reports. However, these reforms have faced their fair share of challenges ranging from inconsistency annual reporting by some SOEs and lack of comprehensiveness of disclosures to cater for the needs of all stakeholders. Nevertheless, the processes provide the basis of learning more about the political and economic incentives that have been driving mineral revenue transparency, what has been working and what has not been working in as far as strengthening mineral revenue transparency in concerned.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objectives of the research

• To investigate the current state of Government led mining tax transparency and reporting practices in Zimbabwe, what has worked well and what has not worked well in terms of advancing mining fiscal transparency reforms
• To understand the political and economic incentives and disincentives that have promoted or stifled mining fiscal transparency reforms in Zimbabwe
• To recommend effective strategies that CSOs can adopt to engage with Government ministries and mining industry players on mining fiscal transparency reforms

Qualifications and Experience

Key Experience and Qualifications

• Possess a post graduate qualification in Economics, Political Economy and Public Policy, Environmental Law, or equivalent
• Possess more than 10 years of experience in conducting similar studies
• Fluency and written and oral communication in English
• Possess access and influence on the subject matter
• Excellent reporting writing

How to Apply

Interested candidates may send an email, application, proposed budget and their CV expressing interest to conduct the research to [email protected] not later than 24 February, 2026