Harare – Zimbabwe’s Ministry of ICT, Postal and Courier Services has moved to hard-wire risk management into the country’s accelerating digital transformation, issuing binding directives to departments to document operational risks, plug fraud loopholes, and embed risk assessments into every major project proposal, effective immediately.

Speaking at an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) workshop for ministry executives in Harare, ICT Minister, Tatenda Mavetera framed the measures as a necessary safeguard for the public purse and citizens’ data as government expands connectivity and digitises services.

“As we work to digitize Zimbabwe and expand connectivity, we must also protect the public purse and the information of our citizens,” Mavetera said.

The workshop yielded three immediate deliverables: validated risk registers must be submitted by November 6; internal controls are to be strengthened to prevent fraud and corruption; and from now on, every new major project proposal must include a risk assessment.

The minister linked these controls directly to Zimbabwe’s ambition of attaining upper-middle-income status by 2030, stating that the goal is unattainable “without a secure and reliable ICT sector”.

The ERM push comes as the ministry oversees one of the government’s most expansive reform agendas, anchored in the National Development Strategy 2 (NDS2) 2026–2030, which prioritises a digitally enabled economy, expanded broadband, and strategic technology leap-frogging.

The ministry’s digital footprint now spans far beyond policy: through the Universal Service Fund, shared base stations, school computer labs, and Community Information Centres (digital centres) have been rolled out to underserved areas, giving millions of previously marginalised Zimbabweans access to online government services and digital literacy training for the first time. Broadband mapping has been used to pinpoint connectivity gaps, while infrastructure-sharing initiatives have extended coverage more efficiently.

The postal service, once seen as a relic of the analogue age, has been repositioned as a digital gateway. Zimpost now hosts digital kiosks offering e-government services, online payments, and digital identity support, and has launched a drone parcel delivery service with a private partner to reach hard-to-access communities—covering a 60-kilometre route in 18 minutes in a recent demonstration.

TelOne, meanwhile, has commissioned an Omni Contact Centre that trains young people in cybersecurity and cloud services, and is expanding its fibre network to strengthen the national digital backbone.

The government has also set an ambitious target of 100 percent digital literacy by 2028, with plans to train 200,000 people in the next three months and produce 1.5 million coders nationwide.

On the security front, the Cyber and Data Protection Act was launched in 2021 to underpin data governance and privacy protection—a legal foundation that the new ERM directives now seek to reinforce at the operational level.

Minister Mavetera’s message to executives was pointed: the speed of digitisation must not outpace the integrity of the systems carrying it.

“This workshop is about ensuring that our digital transformation is safe, reliable, and serves the people,” she said.

The risk registers due on November 6 will be the first test of whether that commitment translates from workshop rhetoric into bureaucratic practice.