Scaling Community Dialogue in Zimbabwe: Pathways to National Influence

This publication is co-authored by Alejandro Urrutia and Tonderai Dombo.

Zimbabwe’s enduring economic, social and political challenges are almost always framed as requiring national-level solutions, particularly elite negotiations and nationwide dialogue initiatives. Yet, recent national-level processes have consistently struggled to gain traction.

This raises an important question: what if the problem is not an inability to develop effective national processes, but rather the assumption that solutions must originate at the national level?

Across Zimbabwe, communities have long relied on dialogue as a practical tool for managing disputes, negotiating interests, and addressing shared challenges. Across villages, districts and wards, Zimbabwean community leaders frequently use dialogue to manage and resolve conflicts.

Yet, local dialogue processes are not systematically connected to one another, nor are they meaningfully linked to national-level decision making. In that regard, the question we address in this paper is whether addressing this dual gap can offer a more effective pathway to national transformation.

Intended primarily for Zimbabwean civil society and community-based organisations that are leading, supporting or participating in local dialogue initiatives and seeking to expand their influence beyond the community level, the paper examines 1) the promise of scaling local dialogue initiatives in Zimbabwe, 2) the different pathways for scaling, and 3) the potential risks.