• Government has transferred ZISCO Steel to the Mutapa Investment Fund (MIF) under Statutory Instrument 58 of 2026, consolidating oversight under a single state investment vehicle to revive the collapsed steelmaker
• The move aligns ZISCO with Kuvimba Mining House under MIF, aiming to leverage mining revenues and centralised governance to restart operations after nearly two decades of dormancy
• Despite renewed structure, success hinges on execution securing capital, stable power supply, modernisation, and overcoming longstanding governance and funding constraints

Harare - The government has formally transferred the long-collapsed Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO) to the Mutapa Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth vehicle in an attempt to breath life into the defunct entity.

The move is intended to inject fresh momentum into the long-stalled revival of the steel plant.

The announcement was gazetted through Statutory Instrument 58 of 2026 under the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Zimbabwe Act [Chapter 22:20], adds ZISCO (to the Fund’s Fourth Schedule.

The 89% state-owned steelmaker, which has stood idle for 18 years, now sits directly under the MIF umbrella alongside its previous preferred suitor, Kuvimba Mining House.

The amendment, made after consultation with the Fund’s board, effectively ends years of fragmented oversight and places the plant under a single, powerful state entity charged with commercialising troubled parastatals.

ZISCO’s story is a painful emblem of deindustrialisation, lost jobs, and repeated government promises that never quite materialised.

The plant’s origins date back to 1948, when it was built as the Rhodesian Iron and Steel Company (RISCO) in Redcliff, near Kwekwe. By independence in 1980 it had been renamed ZISCO and stood as the largest integrated steelworks south of the equator.

At its peak in the late 1980s and 1990s, it produced up to 1.2 million tonnes of steel annually, employed more than 5,500 workers directly and sustained an estimated 50,000 jobs in downstream industries such as construction, engineering and manufacturing.

Its output fed local needs and earned foreign currency through regional exports, anchored by abundant local iron ore at Ripple Creek and coal from Hwange.

The decline began far earlier than most realise. As far back as 1981, the company was already recording daily losses of Z$1.25 million. An official government inquiry in 1986 exposed “mismanagement, poor planning and nepotism” and revealed that essential refurbishments had been neglected even before independence.

The 1990s brought fresh blows, the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) opened the economy to cheap imported steel while tariffs disadvantaged local raw-material producers.

South African competitors which were backed by modern technology and better financing subsequently flooded the market. ZISCO’s ageing equipment never properly upgraded could not compete. By the early 2000s, the problems had become terminal. Chronic underinvestment meant the plant operated on outdated 1950s-era technology.

A series of governance and management failures, including the diversion of critical financial resources away from maintenance and modernisation, as well as disruptive contractual decisions that exposed the company to costly litigation. Together, these factors weakened operational capacity, strained finances, and undermined the steelmaker’s long-term viability.

Hyperinflation, foreign-currency shortages and repeated power outages delivered the final blows. In January 2008, massive electricity failures damaged the blast furnaces so severely that the entire complex was mothballed. The company’s liabilities exceeded US$500 million.

Today, only a skeletal crew of around 400 maintenance workers remains, tending rusting infrastructure in what has become a ghost of Zimbabwe’s industrial past.

Successive governments have repeatedly declared ZISCO’s revival a national priority, yet every initiative has collapsed. In 2011, Indian firm Essar Africa Holdings signed a US$750 million deal promising to restore 3,000 jobs and modernise the plant only for financing disputes and policy shifts to kill the project.

A 2017 agreement with Chinese investor R&F Properties, valued at US$1 billion, unravelled two years later after the new dispensation reviewed it and found the terms excessively favourable to the investor.

Other suitors, including local consortia and unnamed Asian groups, came and went without success. In February 2022, Cabinet turned to a domestic solution, naming state-controlled Kuvimba Mining House as preferred bidder.

Kuvimba with its own interests in gold, nickel, lithium and platinum completed due diligence, signed a management contract, and pledged between US$300 million initially and up to US$1.3 billion over three years.

The plan centred on using ZISCO’s iron-ore resources to generate early cash flow for modernisation. However  four years later, tangible progress on the factory floor has been almost non-existent.

The plant remains silent. No blast furnaces have been fired, no large-scale hiring has occurred, and the promised investment has not translated into visible operations.

The same recurring obstacles, the sheer capital required, unreliable electricity supply, governance challenges and the difficulty of mobilising funds in Zimbabwe’s constrained financial environment.

Now the government’s decision to vest ZISCO directly in the Mutapa Investment Fund which is Kuvimba’s ultimate parent, is an attempt to break this cycle of stagnation.

The Fund, originally established in 2014 and significantly expanded through statutory instruments in 2023, now oversees more than 60 state entities with a combined estimated value exceeding US$16 billion.

Its mandate is clear, commercialise underperforming parastatals, improve governance, attract investment and generate sustainable wealth to support Vision 2030. Through placing ZISCO under the same roof as Kuvimba, authorities hope to create synergies using mining revenues and expertise from Kuvimba to fund steel upgrades while shielding the project from the fragmented decision-making and political interference that doomed earlier efforts.

The Fund has already demonstrated some success in recapitalising other distressed assets, such as injecting millions into the Cold Storage Company to exit judicial management.

Critics, however, remain cautious. The Mutapa Fund has faced questions over transparency and whether its structure truly prevents elite capture.

There is worry that simply shifting ownership between state entities does not address the fundamental problems of power supply, outdated technology or the need for genuine private-sector capital.

The transfer comes amid broader efforts to restructure the Fund’s portfolio and prepare for potential debt relief negotiations.

If successful, a revived ZISCO would be transformative. It could slash Zimbabwe’s annual steel import bill currently running into hundreds of millions of dollars boost manufacturing, create thousands of direct and indirect jobs in one of the country’s most depressed provinces, and serve as an anchor for downstream industries.

The move aligns with Zimbabwe’s National Development Strategy’s push for industrialisation and reduced import dependence.

The latest institutional shift through Statutory Instrument 58 of 2026 may represent the most coordinated attempt yet, but success will ultimately depend on execution, securing real capital, guaranteeing stable power, enforcing commercial discipline and attracting credible partners.