The National Railways of Zimbabwe has brought 100 refurbished high-sided wagons and three locomotives back into service under a US$2.8 million partnership with ferrochrome producer Zimasco, as the state operator pursues a far larger financing package to rebuild its fleet.

The rolling stock was commissioned in Harare on Thursday by Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Felix Mhona, who described the arrangement as a model for reviving idle railway assets without an immediate call on the treasury.

“This partnership exemplifies a win-win financial engineering model. By funding the overhaul of idle wagons in exchange for freight charge offsets, Zimasco has secured a reliable supply chain route to international markets,” Mhona said.

Under the deal, Zimasco financed the refurbishment of idle stock in return for freight charge offsets and dedicated capacity to move chrome and ferrochrome towards the regional ports of Beira and Maputo.

Mhona said a functioning railway was essential to Zimbabwe’s stated goal of reaching upper-middle-income status by 2030, describing rail as the cheapest and safest way to move bulk cargo. He argued the investment would ease logistics bottlenecks and spare rehabilitated roads the damage caused by heavy trucks.

The commissioning forms part of a wider recapitalisation effort led by the Mutapa Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund to which NRZ was transferred.

Fund chief executive John Mangudya said the strategy was aimed at restoring the railway’s commercial viability. Among the planned interventions is a US$115 million facility being negotiated with the African Export-Import Bank, which would fund 10 new locomotives, 315 wagons and the rehabilitation of key infrastructure.

Government is also pursuing track and signalling upgrades and a resource-backed arrangement with China Railway International Group.

Mhona said US$10 million had been secured for the Chicualacuala–Plumtree and Machipanda–Harare lines through tripartite cooperation with Mozambique and Botswana, and that cooperation with South Africa on the North-South Corridor had been revived.

NRZ has been hollowed out by years of under-investment, and freight volumes remain a fraction of what the network carried at its peak in the 1990s. Mhona urged other mining companies, farmers and fuel importers to take up similar partnerships.

Sources: NewZimbabwe.com, 263Chat, Sowetan, MINING.COM, Business Day.

Zimbabwe will open the door to private grain imports after Cabinet approved a drought mitigation plan built around projections of a sharply lower harvest in the 2026/2027 season.

Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Zhemu Soda said Cabinet had signed off on an updated summer plan incorporating drought measures, following a seasonal rainfall outlook pointing to below-normal rains across much of the country.

Government projections put total cereal output for the coming season at about 1.6 million tonnes, down from roughly 2.68 million tonnes the previous season — a fall of close to 40 percent.

“The private sector will be allowed to bring in grain to meet the needs of businesses and people, and they will also look at increasing the amount of grain that households can bring in for basic food,” Soda said, in remarks reported by NewZimbabwe.com.

NewsDay separately reported the Cabinet decision that the private sector would be permitted to import, covering both commercial needs and livestock feed, while households continue to bring in basic food items.

The plan is structured around six pillars, among them an enhanced strategic grain reserve, climate-smart production, livestock drought mitigation and expanded imports, alongside early-warning and coordination measures.

Meteorological forecasts point to reduced rainfall and above-average temperatures, raising the prospect of extended dry spells. The heaviest pressure is expected to fall on smallholder farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture, and on livestock and water supplies.

The move reverses a tightening of import rules made earlier in the year, when improved domestic production allowed the government to scale grain imports back.

Officials have also flagged higher fuel and fertiliser costs, driven by global supply disruption, as a complicating factor for the coming season.

There is one bright spot. This year’s wheat harvest has come in strongly, giving the country a firmer base heading into the summer cropping season and some cushion against the shortfall now being forecast.

Sources: NewZimbabwe.com, NewsDay Zimbabwe, The Herald, Chronicle, Xinhua.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has completed the integration of the national Civil Registry database with mobile money subscriber records, a change that means every mobile wallet in the country should now be traceable to a verified national identity document.

RBZ Governor Dr John Mushayavanhu, responding to questions from The Herald, said the central bank had directed all mobile money operators to complete a customer verification exercise and submit proof of compliance by 30 June 2026. “All operators have since met this requirement and provided the necessary documentation,” he said.

He added that all mobile money wallets had been rescreened in collaboration with the Civil Registry and that the follow-up verification was “successfully concluded by 30 June 2026 with no adverse issues noted during the exercise”. Providers have since been connected to the Civil Registry system so identities can be checked when accounts are opened and during routine know-your-customer reviews.

The directive originated in the central bank’s February 2026 Monetary Policy Statement, which ordered operators to de-register any account that could not be matched to a valid national identification document. The Reserve Bank had warned that duplicated identities, ghost lines and mismatched subscriber details were a systemic risk capable of enabling fraud, identity manipulation and illicit financial flows.

Business Times reported that the exercise has resulted in ghost, fictitious and duplicate wallets being shut down, describing it as a major clean-up of the country’s digital payments ecosystem.

Operators had already been working under a 2021 directive enforcing a strict “one line, one wallet” policy limiting each SIM card to a single mobile money account. Inconsistencies in subscriber databases nonetheless persisted, and it is those gaps the latest measures are designed to close.

For Zimbabweans abroad the practical effect is straightforward. Mobile wallets are one of the main landing points for money sent home, and a wallet that cannot be matched to a valid ID is no longer a wallet. Relatives receiving remittances need their registration details to match the records held by the Civil Registry — and anyone whose account was opened years ago on loose paperwork may find it has been closed.

Sources: The Herald; Business Times.