Online Reporter
Nqobile Bhebhe, [email protected]
THE City of Bulawayo has reported progress in several priority areas under its 2021–2025 Strategic Plan, even as it grappled with severe economic pressures, environmental challenges and institutional constraints.
The assessment is detailed in a recently released report, Terminal Evaluation of the City of Bulawayo 2021–2025 Strategic Plan, which reviews the municipality’s performance over a five-year period.
The plan, developed through extensive consultation with residents and stakeholders, set out an ambitious goal of transforming Bulawayo into a “leading, smart” city by 2025. It was aligned with a range of national and international policy frameworks, including Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030, successive national development strategies and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
“The evaluation of the City of Bulawayo’s 2021-2025 Strategic Plan demonstrates that Council made notable progress in several priority areas despite operating under exceptionally difficult economic, environmental and institutional conditions.
“Across all programmes, Council delivered meaningful improvements particularly in emergency response, refuse collection, wastewater management, public lighting, road rehabilitation partnerships and social programmes supported through strong stakeholder collaborations. These achievements underscore the City’s commitment to its vision of becoming a leading smart and transformative city.”
The evaluation, however, points to persistent structural challenges that weighed on overall performance.
“However, persistent structural challenges significantly constrained overall performance. Severe droughts, aging infrastructure, inflationary pressures and procurement delays hindered progress, especially in critical areas such as water supply reliability, Non-Revenue Water reduction, road maintenance, and affordable housing delivery.”
Customer satisfaction trends and stakeholder consultations presented a mixed picture of service delivery.
“Customer satisfaction trends and stakeholder consultations further revealed that while service delivery improved in some areas, fundamental deficits in water supply, road quality, fault responsiveness and communication remained unresolved. These issues highlight the need for deeper institutional reform, long-term infrastructure investment and strengthened accountability mechanisms.”
Despite these hurdles, the report highlights institutional resilience within Council.
“Council’s ability to leverage partnerships, innovate under pressure and sustain core service delivery functions shows significant resilience and institutional maturity.
“The lessons learnt from this period especially in procurement management, climate resilience planning, digital transformation, and stakeholder engagement provide a strong foundation for designing a more adaptive, inclusive and financially sustainable strategy for 2026-2030.”
As Bulawayo transitions into the next strategic cycle, the focus is expected to shift toward consolidating gains and addressing long-standing service gaps, while expanding revenue generation, strengthening community engagement and accelerating smart-city initiatives.
Under performance indicators, progress was uneven across strategic outcomes.
“Progress was uneven across strategic outcomes. Notable achievements were recorded in emergency response times (consistently 10 minutes), wastewater collection coverage (exceeded targets), refuse collection frequency in residential areas, and the expansion of public lighting coverage (73 percent).
“However, critical services underperformed: water supply hours declined sharply to an average of 5,46 hours per day, Non-Revenue Water (NRW) remained stubbornly high (49 percent), client satisfaction averaged only 40 percent, and road trafficability and condition showed only modest improvement against ambitious targets. Housing delivery (9 220 stands) fell short of the initial five-year goal.”
On progress towards smart city status, the evaluation notes that foundational steps were made.
“Foundational steps were taken, including the development of digital billing/payment platforms, installation of CCTV and solar-powered traffic lights, solarisation of clinics and revenue halls and equipping schools with ICT resources.
“However, many advanced smart city concepts (for example, smart meters, waste-to-energy, floating solar farms, smart industrial parks) remain unimplemented or in early stages.”
Several planned initiatives under governance and administration, including a smart industrial park in Umvumila, digital transport platforms, city-owned buses and solar-powered digital bus stops, were not implemented.
In water, sanitation and hygiene, Council introduced hand-held gadgets for meter reading but made no progress on prepaid smart meters, wastewater recycling projects such as the Khami Dam reclamation project, or biogas digesters at sewer stations.
Under social services, strides were recorded in health and education infrastructure. Twenty-one clinics and Thorngrove Hospital were equipped with solar systems. In education, 30 schools received computer labs, 722 computers, 183 tablets and 371 laptops. Twenty-six schools now have internet connectivity in administration blocks, 12 in computer labs, while Mtshane Primary School has connectivity in the administration block, classrooms and computer lab.
On public perception, the findings point to continued dissatisfaction with core services.
“Stakeholder consultations revealed deep public concern over deteriorating core services, particularly unreliable water supply, poor road conditions and faulty public lighting.
“This contributed to a low public rating (4/10) of the city’s progress toward its ‘smart, transformative’ vision. Positive impacts were noted in skills training for youth, improved emergency services and enhanced water access via community boreholes.”
The report also underscores Bulawayo’s growing role in regional capacity building, particularly in Fire and Ambulance Services.
“By training firefighters from other councils, Bulawayo has positioned itself as a benchmark for excellence. In 2025, the City trained and held an inaugural graduation of 35 firefighters from six Matabeleland North and South Rural District Councils namely Tsholotsho, Kusile, Hwange, Binga, Insiza and Matobo Rural District Councils.
“Additionally, through its long-standing partnership with Operation Florian, the City provided specialised firefighting training to 21 local authorities, mainly urban councils, significantly elevating emergency preparedness nationwide.
“In addition, Bulawayo’s Fire and Ambulance Services trained 240 firefighters from 18 private organisations, including mining institutions.”
Further progress includes the near completion of the City’s Ambulance Training School, the sourcing of a large compressor for breathing apparatus sets, and plans for a temporary satellite station at Cowdray Park Clinic to expand coverage.
Looking ahead, the evaluation recommends prioritising long-term infrastructure investment in water supply, road rehabilitation and modern waste management equipment, strengthening financial and procurement systems, deepening partnerships with clear accountability safeguards and accelerating smart city technologies.
“Building on the lessons and foundations of the 2021-2025 period, Bulawayo is positioned to refocus its strategy on addressing these core challenges to achieve sustainable, inclusive and transformative urban development.”
