Our History:

The prevailing economic declines together with the unstable political environment have phenomenally increased both the depth and extent of poverty in Zimbabwe. This situation, of course, has given a move and added boost towards the growth, proliferation and expansion of the informal sector, which has been in existence for over 30 years.  Participants of the small-scale sector are still, however, often characterised by limited access to capital, low levels of technical skills, lack of entrepreneurship and business management skills.  They are also presented with a shortage of opportunities for skills training; lack of stable and adequate premises to operate from; saturation of markets; limited demand for goods and restrictive policy environment such as zoning regulations and high rentals.  Finally, they face problems associated with the procurement of raw materials or goods for retail and inadequate organisational capacity for the sector to support its own frenzied growth.  Therefore, given the aforementioned, informal sector operators are in evident need of great assistance and heavily rely on the services offered by business development and technical support providers to improve their current conditions.

As the already large number of informal sector operators increases, so will the presently high and expanding supply and demand gap for business development services (BDS).  Currently, it is predicted that the growing demand for BDS will remain largely unmet while the pool of BDS suppliers will continue to be small and inaccessible.  As unfortunate as this situation is for informal sector operators, it presented assistance opportunities for ZOIC, an organisation committed to providing affordable, high quality and demand-driven business development services to the participants of the small-scale sector.  Additionally, donors and, increasingly, the government through the recent appointment of a Minister of State Responsible for the Informal Sector are recognizing economic development as a key poverty alleviation strategy, and are keen to support well-formulated and regulated initiatives and programmes, which target the informal sector operators.  As such, given the recent market conditions, the organisation’s experience and its strategic collaborations, ZOIC is extremely well placed to penetrate the market and vastly improve its position within it.  Furthermore, it can situate itself to become the leader and trendsetter in the industry of BDS.

Zimbabwe Opportunities Industrialisation Centres (ZOIC), a community-based non-profit, non-governmental organisation (NGO), located in the Makombe Complex on Harare Street in Zimbabwe’s capital city of Harare was established on 1 April 1998.  Mr. Phillip Bohwasi is the Founder Executive Director and Mrs. Pamidzayi Nyatsambo was the Founder Chairperson.  They began operations with a donated cell phone and a fax machine and stationery left behind from the African-American Summit, which concluded when ZOIC commenced. 

The organisation seeks to promote employment opportunities, offer training services, and create positive environments for entrepreneurial and small enterprise development in Zimbabwe.  ZOIC, which operates under the Memorandum of Understanding created between the Ministry of National Affairs, Employment Creation & Cooperatives and Opportunities Industrialisation Centres International (OICI), is a programme organised to provide assistance that increases the knowledge and improves the skills of Zimbabwean youth, retrenched civil servants, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs and others who are interested in generating income and bettering the quality of their lives.  ZOIC’s main programme is the Informal Sector Entrepreneurship and Business Development. 

The programme was initially supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through the Poverty Reduction Unit and the Open Society Institute of Southern Africa (OSISA), a USA-based initiative.  Since inception, ZOIC has enjoyed financial support from many international donor organisations.  ZOIC is the implementing agent while OICI, a non-profit making organisation based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, is providing technical support.  Founded in 1964 by the Reverend Dr.  Leon H. H. Sullivan, OIC is an international private voluntary organisation (PVO) that has a worldwide network of over 100 human resource development and training programmes located in America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa.  Under the philosophy of self-help, its mission is to initiate and provide assistance to local NGOs as they strive to improve the quality of lives of the citizens in their communities.