THE Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF) has positioned itself as a critical enabler of Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030 agenda, outlining an expansive strategy to foster a predictable, co-operative, and competitive socio-economic environment.
Zimbabwe adopted the Vision 2030 agenda in September 2018, a collective national aspiration to transform the country into an upper-middle-income society by 2030, with a focus on creating job opportunities and achieving a high quality of life for all citizens.
The long-term vision is being realised through sequential five-year national development strategies — National Development Strategy 1 and 2 — and aligns with global frameworks, notably the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
Social dialogue among key economic players — the Government, business and labour — remains a critical mechanism for achieving this goal, ensuring that diverse interests are harmonised into coherent and implementable policies.
The forum’s secretariat executive director, Mr Albert Nyakadzumbu, detailed the ambitious plan during a sensitisation and engagement meeting with the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare on Monday.
Mr Nyakadzumbu said that a core objective of the TNF was to foster “predictability and stability”, key ingredients for attracting and sustaining long-term investment confidence. He said the forum sought to ensure that major economic shifts, including labour reforms and wage adjustments, occur within a transparent and consistent framework designed to reduce uncertainty for both business and labour. By promoting collective ownership of reform processes among the Government, business and labour, the forum seeks to build broad consensus and public legitimacy for all major economic decisions. Another significant focus of the TNF’s mandate is the proactive management of industrial relations and boosting national productivity.
Mr Nyakadzumbu said the forum would act as an early warning system and resolution platform, providing a vital space for early dispute detection, mediation, and constructive dialogue. This mechanism is crucial for reducing the likelihood of disruptive strikes and adversarial labour disputes.
To enhance Zimbabwe’s regional and global market position, the TNF is championing productivity-oriented discussions, skills upgrading, innovation, and the modernisation of workplaces. These efforts are intended to make businesses better positioned to compete regionally and globally.
“All of these efforts culminate in the long-term goal of establishing a strong Zimbabwe social contract that binds national actors to commitments on wages, productivity, cost of living and economic stabilisation, thereby strengthening social cohesion,” said Mr Nyakadzumbu.
The TNF stands as Zimbabwe’s premier institution for social dialogue, bringing together Government, business and labour to engage on critical matters of national socio-economic development. Established to promote consensus-building, the TNF is central to participatory governance, ensuring diverse national interests are harmonised into coherent, implementable policy directions. To achieve these ambitions, the TNF is strengthening evidence-based negotiations, research and policy analysis.
This will generate wage models, productivity indices, cost-of-living studies, and labour market intelligence that will inform negotiations and guide policy formulation.
“The forum will continue aligning its work with international best practice, including ILO (International Labour Organisation) frameworks and the labour market observatories used by regional institutions.
The TNF will also deepen sector-based social dialogue by establishing social compacts in mining, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, construction and SMEs.
These will allow reforms to be tailored to specific productivity challenges and competitiveness needs,” said Mr Nyakadzumbu.
He said to support this expansion, the secretariat will strengthen its technical capacity in future by recruiting economists, social scientists, policy analysts, legal experts and mediators, while also adopting digital systems for negotiation, documentation, monitoring and reporting.
Stronger engagement and co-ordination will be pursued through regular consultations at national and sectoral levels, while linkages with Cabinet Committees, Ministries and Parliament will be reinforced. Public accountability will be enhanced through the development of a Social Contract Monitoring Dashboard and performance scorecards that track commitments by each social partner.-herald
