The Second Great Zimbabwe — Economic Journal · Tourism & Leadership
Makorokoto, Minister Rwodzi: How Zimbabwe’s Barbara Rwodzi Became Africa’s Unstoppable Cabinet Minister of the Year — and the Transformational Leadership Behind It
She took a tourism ministry and turned it into a trophy cabinet: a US$5 billion target beaten, Air Zimbabwe flying to London again after fourteen years, and award upon award. This is a celebration, yes — and also a masterclass every other ministry would do well to study.
Let me begin with unreserved joy, because some news deserves nothing less. Honourable Barbara Rwodzi, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry, has been named the 2026 Unstoppable African Cabinet Minister of the Year. For those of us who have watched her work closely — and on this platform we have followed Brand Zimbabwe’s rise piece by piece — the honour reads less like a surprise and more like a verdict the evidence had already reached. So today we do something this platform believes in deeply: we give a Zimbabwean leader her flowers while she can still smell them, and then we ask the useful question — why does her way of working actually work?
What the award isA continental verdict, not a courtesy
First, the honour itself, because it matters who is doing the naming. The “Unstoppable Africans” recognition grew out of the Global Africa Business Initiative (GABI), a platform convened under the United Nations Global Compact to change the story told about Africa — from a continent of problems to be managed into one of achievers to be celebrated. Its gatherings, held each year around the UN General Assembly, spotlight Africans who move the continent forward. To be named its Cabinet Minister of the Year is to be judged, against a continent of peers, as one of the people actually making Africa work. This is not a courtesy plaque. It is a continental verdict.
And it did not arrive alone. It lands on a shelf already crowded: Africa’s Tourism Minister of the Year at ITB Berlin 2026, where Zimbabwe was also crowned Destination of the Year; Zimbabwe’s Best-Performing Minister at the 2026 national performance awards; and, over the same stretch, Zimbabwe ranked by Forbes among the best countries in the world to visit. One award can be luck. This many, this fast, is a pattern.
The receipts, literallyThe numbers that earned the trophies
Praise without evidence is flattery, and we do not deal in flattery. So here is the record she has built since taking office in September 2023.
Then raise your eyes from the present to the ambition. Zimbabwe set a US$5 billion tourism-receipts target under Vision 2030 and beat it — and rather than resting, the ministry lifted the bar to a US$10 billion tourism economy by 2030. Fresh investment is following the confidence, with some US$190 million drawn into the sector and receipts up 14% in the first quarter of 2026.
The climb she set, and keeps setting
Tourism receipts: where it was, the target she beat, and the vision ahead
Figures as reported by the Ministry of Tourism & Hospitality Industry and Zimbabwe’s tourism authorities. A leader who keeps moving her own goalposts upward.
The one I love mostAir Zimbabwe comes home to London
Of all the wins, one makes my heart lift as a diasporan. For more than fourteen years, the words “Air Zimbabwe to London” were a memory and a wound. On 22 July 2026, they became a timetable again: direct Harare–London Gatwick flights resumed, three a week, on an Airbus A330-300. Yes, it is early days, and yes, it runs for now on a leased-aircraft arrangement with a Spanish carrier — an honest ledger says so plainly. But make no mistake about what it means. Tourism grows at the speed of seats, and for years the single greatest brake on Brand Zimbabwe was the airlift that was not there. To reconnect the capital directly to one of the world’s great travel hubs is not a ribbon-cutting. It is an artery reopened — for tourists, for the diaspora, for trade, for every family that longed to fly home without a detour.
Pair that with the heritage work that is closest to this platform’s heart. Under the President’s Heritage-Based Tourism Agenda, with the First Lady, Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa, as its patron, Zimbabwe has leaned into exactly the right advantage: not a cheaper copy of someone else’s safari, but a destination whose culture, gastronomy and living heritage cannot be imitated. The inaugural UN Tourism Regional Forum on Gastronomy Tourism, hosted at Victoria Falls with delegates from 33 countries, put that thesis on a global stage — selling Zimbabwe in its own voice. Heritage as strategy, not decoration. That is the transformation I have argued for, happening in real time.
A ministry transformed — milestone by milestone
Kutaura pachikuruWhat “transformational leadership” actually means
Here is the phrase everyone uses and few explain, so let me put it plainly, the way I would at the dinner table. Think of two kinds of boss. The first hands out tasks, checks the boxes, pays for what is done and punishes what is not. The lights stay on; nothing really changes. We call that transactional leadership — management by receipt. The second kind paints a picture of where everyone is going, believes in her people out loud, rolls up her own sleeves and walks the road herself, and somehow the whole team starts doing more than it believed it could. The institution does not just produce more — its very spirit changes. That is transformational leadership. Mutungamiri haangogari achipa mabasa; anovaka vanhu, anoratidza nzira, achifamba iye nzira iyoyo. A leader does not merely hand out jobs; she builds people, shows the way, and walks it herself.
Transactional — keeping the lights on
- Hands out tasks and checks boxes.
- Rewards and punishes; little inspiration.
- Protects the status quo and the budget.
- Measures a ministry by its paperwork.
Transformational — lifting the whole house
- Sets a bold, shared vision people believe in.
- Leads from the front and empowers the team.
- Innovates, and changes the institution’s culture.
- Measures a ministry by what citizens actually feel.
Now watch how neatly Minister Rwodzi fits the second column — not by slogan, but by conduct.
A vision people believe in
US$5 billion, then US$10 billion; “A World of Wonders”; heritage as the selling point. She gave an entire sector a number and a story to rally behind — and they did.
She leads from the front
London, Berlin, Victoria Falls, the UN forums — she shows up and sells the destination herself. She did not delegate Brand Zimbabwe to a brochure; she became its ambassador-in-chief, rising to Vice-President of the UN Tourism General Assembly along the way.
She empowers the team — and the provinces
Twelve tourism clusters across all ten provinces, a decentralised Sanganai expo, a revised licensing system, and reduced sector taxes and levies. She pushed opportunity outward to the whole country rather than hoarding it in the capital.
She fixes the real bottlenecks
Not cosmetics — plumbing. The airlift that was strangling growth is being reopened; gastronomy, culture and business events are being built as new pillars. She attacks the thing that is actually in the way.
Why her way works
Because she treats a ministry as a business to be grown, not a desk to be manned. She set a number, told a story, carried it to the world herself, spread the gains to every province, and fixed the one thing in the way. That is not magic. It is transformational leadership, applied with discipline — and it is teachable.
The lessonWhat every other ministry can take from this
Set a bold number and own it
A ministry without a measurable target drifts. Name the goal, say it publicly, and let the whole sector organise around it — as Tourism did with its billions.
Show up and sell
Leadership is a verb. Be in the room — Berlin, London, the provinces — carrying the message yourself. A principal who travels for the cause outperforms one who signs memos about it.
Spread the gains to the whole country
Decentralise. The cluster model and a roaming national expo mean a win in Victoria Falls lifts Mutare and Masvingo too. Growth that stays in the capital is only half a victory.
Fix the bottleneck, not the optics
Find the one thing choking your sector — for tourism it was airlift — and break it. Citizens feel a reopened route far more than a new slogan.
Lead with what only you have
Compete on the distinctive, not the generic. Zimbabwe sold its heritage, its gastronomy, its wonders — the things no rival can copy. Every ministry has such an asset; the art is to build on it.
I have been accused, gently, of looking for the good in African leadership. I plead guilty, because the world spent a century training us to expect the opposite, and part of this platform’s work is to notice excellence when it stands in front of us. Barbara Rwodzi is excellence standing in front of us. She inherited a ministry and left it unrecognisable — measured, marketed, decentralised, reconnected to the world by air, and decorated by its peers across a continent. That is not the story of a lucky portfolio. It is the story of a leader who knew the way, went the way, and showed the way.
And because we are an honest house, let me name the work that remains, not as a shadow but as a map: turn the leased London wings into a durable national airline; convert a US$5 billion triumph into a US$10 billion economy that the woman selling curios at the Falls can feel in her own pocket; and institutionalise this excellence so it outlives any single minister. These are the challenges of success, not failure — the good kind of hard.
But tonight is for celebration, and we will not be shy about it. To every other ministry watching the tourism sector collect trophy after trophy: the method is not a secret. It is printed above. Go and do likewise. Makorokoto, Honourable Minister. You have made the flag fly higher, and you have shown a nation what its own leadership can look like when it decides to be unstoppable.
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