中文Zimbabwe’s Leather Industry Wants Government to Buy Local — And It Has a Point
There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from watching your own government import what you already make. That frustration surfaced last week in Harare, where the Zimbabwe Leather Development Council (ZLDC) made a direct and unusually pointed appeal: give local leather manufacturers a meaningful share of public procurement contracts, and the industry might actually stand a chance.
Speaking at the Zimbabwe Industrialisation Conference and Expo (ZICE 2026), ZLDC Secretary Jacob Nyathi asked the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to open procurement channels to small and medium-sized enterprises and manufacturing clusters — particularly for supplying boots, belts, holsters and other leather goods to the military, police and security services. It is a request that sounds modest until you look at the numbers behind it.
An Industry Running on Fumes
Zimbabwe’s general leather manufacturers are currently operating at less than 40% of capacity. Some of the smaller producers are limping along at 20% to 30%. Those figures are not the signature of a sector in transition; they are the signature of a sector waiting for demand that never arrives.
What makes this especially galling is that the demand exists. Security services need footwear. Government institutions need leather goods. The orders are real, recurring and predictable — the kind of baseload demand that lets a tannery justify a second shift, or a small workshop hire three more people. The question is simply where those orders go.
Nyathi’s argument is not sentimental protectionism. It is an argument about industrial physics. Factories that run at 30% capacity cannot amortise equipment, cannot retain skilled staff, and cannot invest in the quality improvements that would eventually make them competitive on export markets. Stable domestic demand is not a subsidy — it is the runway.
The Exotic Skins Exception Tells the Real Story
Here is the detail that should trouble policymakers most: Zimbabwe’s specialised tanneries processing exotic skins — crocodile and elephant hides — are performing well and generating strong export earnings.
So the country’s leather sector is not incapable. It is not short of technical skill. When Zimbabwean tanners work with high-value material for buyers who pay properly, they deliver. The bottleneck is not craftsmanship. It is the entire commodity end of the value chain, where local producers are squeezed between poor-quality raw material and buyers who look elsewhere.
That split — a thriving exotic niche alongside a struggling mainstream — is a diagnosis, not a coincidence.
The Problem Starts on the Farm
Nyathi was careful not to blame procurement alone. He flagged animal husbandry as a persistent drag on hide quality, urging the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Water Resources Development to strengthen farmer training programmes.
This is the unglamorous truth of leather economics that gets overlooked in every discussion about tannery technology and finishing chemistry: you cannot tan your way out of a bad hide. Brand marks in the wrong place, parasite damage, careless flaying, poor curing — these defects are locked in before the material ever reaches a tannery. A country with a weak livestock extension service will have a weak leather industry, no matter how much it invests downstream.
Then there is the goat problem. Zimbabwe has roughly 4.5 million goats and records high slaughter rates. Yet most goat skins are simply discarded rather than converted into leather. Goat skin is not a marginal material — it is the basis for glove leather, linings, bookbinding and premium small goods, and it commands real prices in international markets. Leaving millions of skins to rot is, in the plainest terms, throwing away foreign exchange.
Coordination Exists — Execution Doesn’t
Zimbabwe is not lacking in strategy documents. The sector operates under the Zimbabwe Leather Sector Strategy (2021–2030), and regional efforts are anchored by the SADC Regional Leather Value Chain Model Policy Framework. Both aim squarely at value addition, expanded manufacturing and stronger regional trade. The value chain itself — livestock farmers, hide merchants, abattoirs, tanneries, manufacturers and research institutions — is coordinated through the Leather Institute of Zimbabwe.
The architecture, in other words, is already built. What is missing is the demand signal that would make anyone act on it.
Why This Matters Beyond Zimbabwe
Public procurement is one of the few levers that developing-country governments can pull without waiting for foreign investment, trade deals or global demand cycles. It costs nothing extra — the state is buying the boots regardless. The only decision is whose factory gets the order.
Several African leather-producing nations are wrestling with the same equation right now, from Kenya’s industrial park build-out to Ethiopia’s export ambitions. Zimbabwe’s version is simply more explicit: the industry has done the arithmetic, brought it to a national industrialisation conference, and put it to the ministry directly.
Whether Harare acts on it is another question. But Nyathi has framed the choice honestly. Either public money circulates through Zimbabwean tanneries and workshops, or it leaves the country — and the 40% capacity figure gets worse.
Source: Leather News, reporting on The Herald.
