Tendai Ruben Mbofana
When ICT Minister Tatenda Mavetera recently stood before parliamentarians to explain why Zimbabweans pay high data tariffs, her explanation was smooth and convenient.
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She reminded the nation that Zimbabwe is landlocked, forced to “import” bandwidth through fiber cables stretching across coastal neighbors like South Africa and Mozambique.
It is a neat, technical argument that shifts the blame to sea landings and cross-border transit charges.
Yet, while geographically factual, this explanation tells only a fraction of the truth.
Geography is an act of nature, but the punitive cost of living in Zimbabwe—including internet access—is entirely man-made.
To understand her argument, one must first demystify what “importing data” actually means.
Many citizens view the internet as an invisible cloud floating in the air.
In reality, the internet relies on massive undersea glass cables resting on the ocean floor.
These cables carry light signals containing global information across continents.
Because Zimbabwe has no coastline, local telecom companies cannot plug directly into these ocean cables.
They must pay foreign optical fiber networks to lay physical cables across neighboring countries to our border.
That physical pipeline across borders is what constitutes “imported” bandwidth.
Yet, this landlocked narrative is the oldest shield in the state’s rhetorical arsenal.
It is dusted off whenever citizens demand accountability for uncompetitive pricing.
A quick look across our borders shatters the Minister’s logic.
Landlocked regional peers like Malawi and Rwanda share our exact geographic predicament, yet consumers in Lilongwe access data for as little as $0.38 per gigabyte.
Meanwhile, a Zimbabwean consumer pays $4.00 for a standard 1GB weekly allocation—a rate that climbs beyond $5.00 to $6.00 per gigabyte on daily micro-bundles and social media packages.
If geography were the primary driver of digital pricing, landlocked Africa would present a uniform cost landscape.
It does not.
The real driver behind our exorbitant data tariffs sits right here between the Zambezi and the Limpopo.
Zimbabwean mobile network operators face a crushing combined tax and levy burden of roughly 30 percent on their revenues and operations.
This heavy-handed fiscal structure forces operators to contend with a 15 percent Value Added Tax, and statutory license fees payable to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).
In addition, there are customs duties on network hardware, and mandatory contributions to universal service funds.
These domestic levies accumulate aggressively long after foreign bandwidth crosses our border.
Furthermore, because of persistent national power grid collapses, operators are forced to run heavy diesel generators around the clock to keep thousands of base stations alive.
Add to this persistent currency friction, heavy regulatory overheads, and steep frequency licensing fees, and the cost of foreign transit bandwidth shrinks into an insignificant fraction of the final consumer bill.
Yet, while these state-imposed burdens are punishing, we cannot pretend these corporations are merely passive victims of a bad system.
They actively compound the crisis.
Safely cocooned within a comfortable corporate oligopoly, Zimbabwe’s mobile network operators behave less like essential service providers and more like toll collectors on a deserted highway.
They actively exploit a captive population through predatory pricing models, engineering short-lived data bundles that evaporate almost instantly.
In doing so, they shrink megabyte allocations overnight, forcing families to sacrifice basic necessities just to buy fleeting connectivity.
Delivering abysmal network quality, dropped calls, and glacial speeds while comfortably padding their profit margins, these corporations prove they are just as culpable in bleeding the Zimbabwean consumer dry as the state is.
This habit of hiding behind external geography while ignoring internal policy is a recurring pattern.
Take fuel prices as a prime case in point.
For years, motorists have been told that high pump prices stem from international oil shocks and our landlocked status.
Yet a breakdown of the pump price reveals that government taxes, excise duties, carbon taxes, and the Strategic Reserve Levy consume significant amounts on every single liter.
Zimbabwean motorists pay among the highest fuel prices in the SADC region not because Mozambique is far, but because the fiscus treats the fuel pump as a cash cow.
We see the same dynamic in local manufacturing and food distribution.
Whenever the cost of basic commodities escalates, official commentary swiftly points toward global supply chain disruptions or port congestion in Durban.
Unmentioned are the bureaucratic red tape at our own border posts, exorbitant port-of-entry clearance fees, toll fees, and unpredictable local tax policies.
These issues penalize local businesses long before goods ever reach a supermarket shelf.
It is time to retire the landlocked excuse. Being surrounded by land presents transport challenges, certainly, but it does not compel a government to heap compounding taxes on essential goods and services.
Internet access in the modern economy is not a luxury item to be taxed into exclusivity; it is a vital utility that powers education, commerce, and innovation.
Yes, Ms. Mavetera, data is imported.
Broadband must travel through kilometers of foreign fiber cables to reach us.
But the reason a Zimbabwean worker must spend a disproportionate slice of income to stay connected has very little to do with the Indian Ocean.
It is the direct outcome of domestic taxation, regulatory overreach, and a refusal to reform.
The sea may be far, but the policy choices driving these prices are entirely our own.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on+263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com