Online Reporter
Business Reporter
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) will convene its flagship annual business conference and executive development platform, the Strategic Intelligence Forum (SIF) 2026, from 7 to 9 October at the Hyatt Regency in Harare.
Building on the inaugural forum held last year, which attracted an average of 100 participants per day, SIF 2026 will expand its programme through dedicated Strategy Intelligence, Governance Intelligence and Sustainability Intelligence streams. The event is expected to draw chief executives, board members, policymakers, investors, development partners, entrepreneurs and senior business leaders.
At the centre of this year’s agenda is a question with far-reaching implications for how Zimbabwean businesses organise themselves in an increasingly digital economy: what should be shared, what should be federated, and what should remain sovereign?
According to concept notes released ahead of the forum, data and digital sovereignty are layered, and meaningful sovereignty does not require every organisation to build every capability independently. Instead, shared infrastructure beneath proprietary layers could reduce duplication and cost while preserving competitive differentiation.
“Imagine every household building its own road to the main highway,” the forum brief states. “Each road may be independently owned, but collectively we have duplicated infrastructure, higher costs and less value from the network.”
The forum, which is being hosted in partnership with Zimpapers will explore the potential of a shared data and intelligence infrastructure for business, encompassing industry benchmarks, market size estimates, pricing intelligence, customer trends, demand forecasts, competitor and sector analytics, geographic intelligence, purchasing trends, SME benchmarks, credit and risk signals, supply-chain intelligence and AI-generated market reports.
Crucially, the concept stops short of proposing a single central database into which firms surrender their data. Rather, it envisages a trusted ecosystem in which common infrastructure, standards, methodologies and analytical capabilities are shared, while organisations retain control over proprietary and commercially sensitive information.
This approach places governance at the heart of the discussion. Key questions to be interrogated include who owns the infrastructure, who sets the standards and methodologies, who can access what, how commercially sensitive information is protected, how participants retain control of their data, and how value created from shared intelligence is distributed.
Dr Tichakunda Rodney Mwenje will unpack what such an infrastructure could look like for Zimbabwean business and explore how it might be hosted, governed and made valuable to participating organisations.
The forum will also examine whether shared intelligence infrastructure can enable businesses to compete more effectively without requiring them to build every layer of the ecosystem independently, and what such an infrastructure would look like in practice.
Economic shifts, evolving regulation, technology, governance and sustainability are increasingly intersecting to shape enterprise competitiveness. SIF 2026 aims to interrogate these shifts and challenge assumptions.
The three-day programme will feature a range of specialist sessions, including the Africa Geopolitics Seminar, the Bring Your Strategy – Stress-Test Masterclass, the Board and Executive Leadership Forum, the Legal and Regulatory Risk Masterclass, and the Sustainability Accelerator.
