“It would be beautiful to have more companies nurture the talent that they have locally.”
Natasha Manyau-Katsiru started as an intern at the dairy company Kefalos about ten years ago, but today she is the head of research. She travels the world to unearth new ice cream or yoghurt flavour innovations. Many of her university classmates struggled to find work, so she feels fortunate to be part of a company that supports young talent.
“I started here when I was a student,” says Manyau-Katsiru, 29 years old, as she walks through the company’s noisy, state-of-the-art dairy plant. “I was nurtured in my job until I got to the point where I could work independently. It would be beautiful to have more companies that can nurture the talent that they have locally.”
The Kefalos plant, located about 40 km south of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, is filled with freezers, ice cream machines and flavourings brought in from Denmark, Germany and Italy. Kefalos financed some of this with a loan from a local Zimbabwean bank. All the dairy’s milk is bought from small local farms, and factory wastewater is filtered and reused in nearby pastures. Women constitute more than half the management team at the company.
Natasha Manyau-Katsiru started as an intern at a dairy company and now is in charge of research.
The loan that Kefalos received is not a handout. It’s an investment in Zimbabwe. This loan was made possible through a European Investment Bank (EIB) programme that gives finance on good terms to local banks in Africa. The programme is the European Union’s main tool when working with African economies. When local banks receive this financing, they give small loans to many businesses like Kefalos. The attractive terms ensure that loans don’t consume most of a company’s profits.
The financing makes a big difference in the lives of people like Manyau-Katsiru, and it answers a critical need in a country afflicted by debt, where credit is short.
“Credit lines for local banks from institutions like the European Investment Bank have been absolutely critical to our economy,” says Ben Mbanga, managing director of Mangwana Capital, a private equity firm based in Harare that invests in agricultural companies. “Our climate is so good in Zimbabwe for agriculture, but the missing link has been access to reasonable finance at a good price and with good repayment terms.”
This is a story about connecting links. It’s about growing companies, steady jobs and better lives. It’s about children who dream of becoming chief executives of their own companies, because they feel that there is more opportunity today. This story is also about ripple effects for whole communities.
A large investment obstacle
Zimbabwe has an array of challenges. Near the top of the list is the unpaid government debt owed to global financial institutions for more than two decades, which deters many international institutions. Zimbabwe also needs a lot of investment in the public and private sectors. The freight rail system is almost nonexistent. Electricity outages are so frequent that, in a restaurant or business meeting, when the lights die, conversations continue uninterrupted in the dark.
John Mushayavanhu, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, identifies the debt defaults as a key obstacle to a stable economy. In his office atop Harare’s Reserve Bank Tower, the tallest building in the country, he emphasises the importance of new global collaboration.
“Obviously the first thing we need to do is to address the debt issue, and the next thing we have to do is to modernise and go digital,” Mushayavanhu says. “We also need to cooperate with the rest of the world and we need the support of the rest of the world.”
“Zimbabwe needs Europe and Europe needs Zimbabwe.”
Until a debt resolution is reached, the European Investment Bank, the European Union and the few other development institutions working in Zimbabwe are placing most bets on the private sector, mainly in agriculture, the biggest employer.
Zimbabwe’s finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, says the answer for the future is to keep the doors open on both sides.
“There is no way that Zimbabwe can be an island on its own without critical partners such as the European Union and suppliers with credit such as the EIB,” Ncube says. “There is just so much that we can share in terms of training or skills acquisition from Europe or tourism. Clearly, Zimbabwe needs Europe and Europe needs Zimbabwe going forward.”
A role to play in the community
Irvine’s poultry farm, about an hour south of Harare, is creating jobs and expanding with financing from a local bank. What began in 1957 in the Irvine family’s spare bedroom in the town of Waterfalls in north-central Zimbabwe has grown into a multinational company raising 50 million chicks a year and producing more than 200 million eggs. The company has more than 2 000 employees.
Irvine’s knows that —if it is to thrive— it also has a role to play in the surrounding community. Irvine’s runs two schools for about 700 children and provides meals and medical care for the local population. The company set up shops around Zimbabwe to teach several thousand “outgrowers” every year, mainly women, how to raise chickens and sell them back to Irvine’s for a profit.
“Raising chickens is not as easy as people might think,” says Robert Armstrong, deputy managing director at Irvine’s. “It takes a lot of care and training. This is a live product without a mother. The outgrowers are the mothers. If they have no training, they lose about 50% of the chicks, and with training, they lose only about 10%.”
Irvine’s received a loan in 2025 from Zimbabwe’s Central Africa Building Society bank, also called CABS, to expand breeding and exports. CABS had received a €15 million loan from the European Investment Bank in 2021. Without this loan from CABS, the company’s expansion and the consequent new jobs would have been delayed, and chick production cut.
“What is not working in the country is the funding for companies – a lack of credit or access to finance,” says Philip Mushosho, the head of commercial operations at Irvine’s. “And this lack of credit hurts consumption and means families have less money to spend. It hurts the wider economy.”
Support for the small players
Lois Ngonyamo, a quality assurance executive at Irvine’s, says the success of small businesses adds up and creates a successful country. “What we need as a country is support for small players to grow because we know that as businesses grow, employment is created,” she says.
And stable work is a big achievement. Ngonyamo has worked at Irvine’s 27 years. “It’s important that I have a good job. Because I’ve got a family to look after—I’ve got two boys. I’m married and my boys need to go to school. And I want the best for my children.”
In the past five years, the European Investment Bank signed loans worth €60 million with banks in Zimbabwe to improve employment and inclusion. The most recent loan was €20 million in March 2025 to Stanbic Bank.
This financing allows local banks to offer loans in sectors such as agriculture and renewable energy with repayment periods as long as seven years. A typical business loan in Zimbabwe has to be paid back in two or three years. That makes it hard to invest for the long-term.
The new flexible loans provide just the kind of stability that Ngonyamo talks about. For Irvine’s, that was important during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We helped poultry farms that were just coming out of the avian influenza period and then also were dealing with the pandemic,” says Liana Kawisa, a client relationship manager with the Central Africa Building Society in Harare who worked on Irvine’s poultry loan. “Companies in Zimbabwe need funding to resuscitate their operations as well as upgrade them to make sure that they meet industrial standards and can increase production.”
The local loans to the Central Africa Building Society, NMB, First Capital Bank and Stanbic gave new life to more than 30 companies and created 6 000 jobs. The European Investment Bank and the European Commission are in discussions to offer new loans to these same banks.
“There are a lot of gaps in Africa and a lot of potential for growth in many parts of the continent,” says Charmaine Lebese, a business analyst in the South Africa office of the European Investment Bank. “Access to finance is really the pillar that is needed to catapult the continent to that next level.”
New business tools for women
A cornerstone of EIB Global loans in Africa is the empowerment of women. Africa has one of the highest percentages of female entrepreneurs in the world. More than half the small businesses in Zimbabwe are led by women. A loan is hard to get for any small company in Africa, but it’s more difficult for women who often don’t have collateral to post.
On the sidelines of an EU-Zimbabwe business forum in Harare in late May, Gerald Gore, the chief executive of NMB, one of the biggest banks in the country, explained that his firm offers training for women to start a business and handle bookkeeping.
“When women borrow money, they do it for useful things,” Gore says. “The profit goes to pay school fees or medical coverage. All the things that are important. I’m sorry to say this, but you can't always say exactly the same thing for men.”
Stanford Dobvu, the head of business banking at First Capital Bank in Harare, visits farms around Zimbabwe many times each month and witnesses the benefits for women and society in general.
“I know that this farm employs mostly women, so that shows that these loans are helping whole communities around the area,” says Dobvu, standing in the middle of a blueberry farm in north-central Zimbabwe whose rows of plump berries run farther than the eye can see. “These partnerships are a win-win for everyone, but mainly they provide income, and obviously every business wants to make money. As a bank, we also make money. It’s perfect.”
“These partnerships are a win-win for everyone.”
Fighting climate change is a necessity
The 15 bouncy minutes leading to Luxaflor Roses’s entrance in the Mashonaland Central Province feels like a rollercoaster ride. This region of rolling hills is known as the Highveld, characterised by a higher altitude, fertile soils and a good climate. It’s an ideal region to grow flowers and fruit.
“Sorry about that drive and the roads,” says Roelof Nugteren, the company’s general manager, as visitors arrive at the farm.
Luxaflor is one of the biggest flower companies in Zimbabwe, located next to a wildlife preserve about an hour north of the country’s capital. Zimbabwe’s climate, with hot days, cold nights and no freezing weather or harsh winds, is a good cradle for flowers and delicate fruits. But farmers need a lot of irrigation and protection from the hot sun. This requires special equipment that is often imported from Europe and extra financial support.
Having more financial breathing space creates long-term thinking, as opposed to short-term solutions, says Nugteren, who grows more than 30 varieties of roses and exports most of them to the Netherlands.
Flowers are one of the top exports in Zimbabwe. The heart of Luxaflor’s operations are the modern, greenhouses covering hundreds of rows of rose bushes and other flowers spread evenly in areas bigger than football fields. The 22-hectare farm is the largest exporter of flowers in Zimbabwe and most employees are women. Luxaflor received a loan in 2023 from a local bank, First Capital Bank. The company used the money to buy greenhouse material from Europe to protect flowers from ultraviolet rays and to install huge irrigation dripper lines that snake around the greenhouses.
Stepping into a flower farm greenhouse, the air is warm, humid and sweet. Women and men with gloved hands navigate the rows inspecting blooms and carefully cutting the thorny stems when flowers are at their peak. The cuttings are whisked to a sorting room before going into cold storage and getting shipped across Africa and Europe. Nugteren echoed comments from every farmer visited – the single biggest factor keeping his company alive is good financing.
“Zimbabwe is unique in the sense that, if you are not profitable from day one, it's going to be quite hard to to keep your company afloat,” Nugteren says.
As he talks, the beauty of his surroundings is evident. Nugteren is surrounded by flower-packing or cold-storage buildings, greenhouses and grassy land dotted with palms and other tropical trees. A few hundred metres away, wildebeests graze lazily over a low fence. But it’s also an unforgiving landscape. “You know, people live hand to mouth in regions of the world like this,” he says.
Win-win deals in Europe and Africa
As more European companies come to Zimbabwe, trade with the European Union is increasing, rising over 30% from 2021 to 2025. Foreign investment rose by about 90% during this same period as the government works harder to attract investment and rebuild collaborations.
“I think partnerships is what forms the core of the cooperation between the European Union and other countries in Africa today,” Jobst von Kirchmann, the EU ambassador to Zimbabwe, says. “It’s a move away from development aid, a move away from an old-school approach, to having working relationships that are mutually beneficial.”
In late May 2025, von Kirchmann organised a packed forum between Europe and Zimbabwe to attract companies from both continents and to discuss trade and investment cooperation. The event highlighted the Global Gateway programme, through which the European Investment Bank and the European Union are increasing trade and partnerships across the world.
Global Gateway encourages more businesses to trade globally. Companies that get financing in Zimbabwe are buying equipment or supplies in Europe to improve manufacturing —like Kefalos’s Danish and Italian ice-cream equipment— and then shipping better-quality products back to Europe.
“With the right partnerships, Africa can achieve so many more development goals and improve thousands of families’ lives.”
For the past few years, Jim Hodges, who spent a good chunk of his childhood in Harare and leads the regional European Investment Bank office in Pretoria, has worked with the loan officer Peter Zajc to enhance Zimbabwe’s private sector by signing multibeneficiary loans. Private companies’ default rates with local banks are very low, which allows the Bank to help the private sector. However, the debt concerns make it difficult to work with the public sector.
“With the right partnerships and preparation, Africa can achieve so many more development goals and improve thousands of families’ lives, as the economic engine gets running,” Hodges says during a panel discussion at the EU-Zimbabwe business forum.
Giving back to local communities
A half-hour north of Zimbabwe’s capital, Selby Enterprises has grown into one of the biggest fruit and vegetable producers by developing business ties in Europe and by supporting local communities. The farm provides homes, education, healthcare and recreation for more than 300 families. In the farm’s recreation centre, the company encourages women to hold regular meetings and discuss their needs, family life or careers.
Selby offers employees a grocery store, daycare centre, fitness room and football field. Selby is a long-time exporter to the large Dutch retailer Albert Heijn. The company sends its blueberries, peas, vegetables, citrus fruits, chilis and tea to the Netherlands and other parts of Europe, Africa and Asia.
All that activity needs solid financing. Selby received a loan in 2021 from the Central Africa Building Society to expand blueberry production and another loan in 2022 from NMB to upgrade refrigeration, banana storage and power generation. “The main thing we need to grow,” says Derek Selby, the company’s managing director, “is good financing.”
Brighton Lumbilani, 34, works in Selby’s export department. He has been cared for by the company and lived in a village on the farm since his father died when he was in the sixth grade. Selby paid for his school fees and books. After he finished secondary school, he started working at the company. He also is the company football team’s coach.
“It's really difficult, especially for youth like me in Zimbabwe,” Lumbilani says. “We have the know-how, we have the skills and we have the zeal. But access to the capital, access to all the tools that are needed for our lives to be better, we still are far from that.”
Blueberries to the rescue
Fruit farming is solving a sizeable portion of Zimbabwe’s unemployment problem. Blueberry export earnings have grown from $1 million in 2018 to an estimated $50 million in 2024. The Netherlands is the top buyer of blueberries from Zimbabwe, followed by China and Germany. The country’s berries are coveted because they grow when berries are out of season in other parts of the world.
“The climate allows us to harvest 95% of the time in perfect conditions,” says Stuart Torr, who, with his brother, Craig, runs PalmLife, one of the country’s biggest blueberry farms. “The weather gives us a huge advantage against our competitors, and we’ve got great skilled labour and we've got the land. So in terms of the future, blueberries in Zimbabwe are very bright.”
“It's quite a blessing to have a job in Zimbabwe, because the unemployment rate is very high, and it’s hell not to have work.”
On Torr’s farm, hundreds of blueberry bushes rest in big pots on mounds of dirt that stretch out more than 100 metres under protective netting. The pots are used to improve the soil and optimise water use. Blueberries thrive in acidic soil and not too much moisture. When harvesting starts in May, large teams of workers, most of them women, move through the fields picking berries by hand. The berries are rushed to cooling stations. A blast of cold air keeps them fresh for several weeks during shipping.
PalmLife, located in Mash East Province, about an hour east of Harare, started in 2019 with ten hectares. Today, it grows berries on 80 hectares. It received a loan from NMB for a 20-hectare expansion. The company exports to the Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, Austria and the United Kingdom. Its irrigation equipment comes from Italy, Cyprus and the United Kingdom. The company employs about 1 000 people in peak season. Workers are mainly from the local communities, and 80% are women.
“It's quite a blessing to have a job in Zimbabwe, because the unemployment rate is very high, and it’s hell not to have work,” says Stewart Pedzisi, a human resources manager at PalmLife, standing in field next to thousands of blueberries ripening under a warm blue sky. Employment has huge advantages for nearby communities, he says, allowing families to buy a car, send kids to good schools, get better healthcare, save for the future. “I can see clearly how people in my community are changing,” Pedzisi says.
Zimbabwe is changing, too. Global collaboration ensures that small businesses find their feet and blossom, while creating stronger and healthier communities. Lumbilani, the soccer coach at Selby fruit farm, believes that more cooperation like this will keep Zimbabwe heading in the right direction.
“We need the right tools to be given to everyone,” he says, standing near his soccer team’s modern fitness room on the fruit farm, “and we need the outside world to come and partner with Zimbabwe, especially to help the youth.”
