Ten days in Harare, the economic cost of incomplete narratives, and why AfCFTA will need more than tariffs. I have a rule I rarely break. As a UN official, I am careful about commenting publicly on my own country. That caution matters. My role is not to promote governments or defend national reputations. But my work is also about African markets, investment and development. And when incomplete information begins to shape where people travel, trade and invest, silence is not always neutral either. So I am making an exception. Not to defend Zimbabwe, and certainly not to argue that its challenges are unimportant. I am making a simpler point: no country should be priced from an incomplete information set. When perception stops updating as reality changes, there is an economic cost. Africans pay that cost on one another more often than we realise. Not long ago, one of my closest friends said something that stopped me. He is extremely well travelled, across Africa and well beyond it, which makes him a useful person to listen to when he compares places. He had just spent ten days in Harare with a group of golfers and businesspeople. It was his first visit to Zimbabwe. His verdict came half in admiration and half in genuine irritation. “I feel cheated. Nobody told me the truth about Zimbabwe.” He had arrived carrying an image of a broken, backward and unsafe society. Instead, he found a city he described as organised, warm and remarkably safe. He talked about the roads, the behaviour of drivers, the homes and the malls. He could not stop talking about the architecture, and about how little credit Zimbabwean architects get for it. “Zimbabwean architects are seriously underappreciated,” he said. He has a point. The Eastgate Centre in downtown Harare, designed by Mick Pearce and cooled entirely by natural ventilation modelled on termite mounds, opened in 1996, won an international Certificate of Merit from the International Council of Shopping Centres, and earned Pearce the Prince Claus Award for culture and development. It has since been studied and copied by architects abroad, including at Portcullis House opposite the UK Parliament in London. But what impressed him most was something less photographable: the people. He said the quality and friendliness of service in Harare's restaurants compared favourably with almost anywhere he had travelled, on the continent or beyond it. At no point, he told me, did he feel like a stranger. And Zimbabweans, he added, seemed to live up to their reputation as some of the continent's most thoughtful and well-educated people. Then he became serious. “I’ve travelled this continent. Harare is somewhere I could live.” Now, ten days in Harare is not Zimbabwe. The lived reality in high-density suburbs, smaller towns and rural areas can look very different from the parts of the city a visitor encounters, and that difference deserves its own honest telling. But that is precisely the point. My friend did not discover “the truth” about Zimbabwe in ten days. He discovered that the truth he had arrived with was incomplete. That distinction matters. Zimbabwe has real governance, institutional and economic challenges, and they should not be minimised. Questions of public accountability, institutional performance and political freedoms matter. Journalists, citizens and institutions that help societies examine themselves honestly perform an important public service. Acknowledging progress does not require denying problems, just as acknowledging problems should not require ignoring progress. Investors need both sides of the picture. What concerns me is not that Zimbabwe's difficulties are reported. They should be. It is that information about what is changing, what is working and where opportunity is emerging often travels much more slowly. The IMF reported that Zimbabwe's economy grew 8.3 percent in 2025, up from 1.7 percent the year before, driven by a rebound in agriculture, strong mining activity and favourable gold prices. Inflation has remained low, the exchange rate relatively stable, and the current account is in surplus. Zimbabwe met all quantitative targets through end-March under the first review of its IMF Staff-Monitored Programme, an important marker on the road to arrears clearance, debt restructuring and re-engagement with the world. The World Bank puts the country's 2025 GDP at roughly 51 billion US dollars: not an economically insignificant economy, whatever its reputation suggests. None of this means Zimbabwe has solved its problems. It means reality has moved. Reputation often moves more slowly. I make a version of this argument in my book, The Missing Circuit. I call it the ignorance premium: the extra cost we attach to a place not because of what we know about it, but because of what we don't. Uncertainty becomes risk. Risk becomes price. Eventually reputation quietly substitutes for evidence. My friend's ten days in Harare were the ignorance premium disappearing in real time. Zimbabwe did not become safer, more educated or more investable the moment his aircraft landed. He simply acquired more information, day after day, and his assessment changed accordingly. His group was not only golfers. They were businesspeople, and having experienced the country for themselves, some are now talking seriously about investment. Nothing fundamental about Zimbabwe changed during their visit. What changed was what they knew. That is how perception becomes economics. And this is where the story becomes much bigger than Zimbabwe. We talk about the African Continental Free Trade Area as a project of tariffs, customs procedures, rules of origin, roads, border posts and payment systems. All of that matters. But AfCFTA also has a familiarity problem. We cannot build a continental market among people who barely know one another's economies. Too many African businesses know Dubai, London, Guangzhou or Istanbul better than they know Lusaka, Kigali, Harare, Abidjan or Maputo. We import products from outside Africa that another African country already produces. We seek investors thousands of kilometres away while businesses next door are looking for markets. We pay an ignorance premium on one another, and we pay it inside our own continent. That is not merely a communications failure. It is lost trade, lost investment, lost jobs, and ultimately lost African market share, in markets Africans could be serving themselves. Making AfCFTA work therefore means something more ambitious than lowering tariffs. It means helping African businesses recapture African markets. Governments have to make movement easier. Airlines must connect our cities. Banks and payment systems must make transactions possible. Trade agencies and embassies must become serious market-makers. But businesses also have to travel. Investors have to look. And Africans need to become more curious about Africa. Perhaps that is why I keep thinking about my friend's first sentence. Nobody actually lied to him. He had simply been given too little information for too long. Zimbabweans themselves also have a responsibility to tell a fuller story. Tell the difficulties honestly. Tell the institutional weaknesses and the history that still shapes the present. But also tell the businesses being built. Tell the architecture. Tell the culture. Tell the hospitality. Tell the reforms that are working. Tell the opportunity. Because the answer to an incomplete negative narrative is not an incomplete positive one. It is better information. And perhaps that is one of the overlooked tasks of African integration. Before we can trade with one another, invest in one another and recapture our own markets, we may first have to see one another properly. Zimbabwe does not need propaganda. Africa does not need propaganda. We need evidence. And, occasionally, an invitation. Come and see for yourself. And if you’ve seen it already, say so out loud. The writer is Director of the Africa Sustainable Finance Hub, a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Global Innovators Group, and UNDP Resident Representative in South Africa. He writes on African markets, investment and sustainable development.
