• Zimbabwe’s 7.04% YoY growth in Q4 2025 cements a full-year trajectory that significantly outpaces the IMF’s 4.0% average for Sub-Saharan Africa,
• This marked 2025 as the economy's most robust expansion period since the stabilisation of the multi-currency framework.
• Agricultural served as the primary economic engine, delivering an unprecedented four consecutive quarters of expansion above 9%, ultimately contributing 11.09% to total GDP
• Despite a sharp 18.37% contraction in the electricity and water sectors during Q4, the core "productive triad “of mining (15.41%), manufacturing (14.59%), and trade (11.11%) maintained a stable 41% share of national output

Harare- Zimbabwe's economy closed 2025 with a full-year growth trajectory that comfortably outpaced regional peers, with the Q4 2025 year-on-year GDP growth rate of 7.04% confirming that the economy sustained meaningful expansion through all four quarters of the year.

According to the ZimStat Quarterly GDP release presented on 7 May 2026, GDP at current prices reached ZWG 448.5 billion in Q4 2025, the highest quarterly nominal figure recorded across all four quarters of 2025, up from ZWG 358.1 billion in Q1, ZWG 401.7 billion in Q2, and ZWG 420.2 billion in Q3.

The sequential accumulation of value across every quarter of 2025 is the most straightforward summary of what the full-year picture shows, an economy that did not stall, did not reverse, and did not give back the gains it made in the first half of the year.

The year-on-year quarterly sequence for 2025 reads 3.25%, 11.45%, 10.65%, and 7.04%. The full-year average implied by that sequence sits well above the IMF's April 2026 projection of approximately 4.0% for Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, and confirms the 6% full-year figure that the World Bank and IMF had projected for Zimbabwe entering 2025.

By the standard of Zimbabwe's own history and by the standard of its regional peers, 2025 was a strong year.

The standout sectoral story of 2025 was not a single quarter's performance but a full-year pattern. Agriculture, fishing and forestry delivered quarter-on-quarter growth of 15.08% in Q1, 9.96% in Q2, 14.99% in Q3, and 16.37% in Q4. Four consecutive quarters of expansion above 9%, with three of those four above 14%, and with the growth rate accelerating in Q4 rather than fading.

No other sector in the economy produced a comparable run of consistency at comparable growth rates. The sector's contribution to GDP reached 11.09% in Q4, recovering from a dip to 9.53% in Q3, meaning that agriculture not only grew but grew its share of national output in the final quarter of the year.

The agricultural performance was consistent with the record tobacco output and strong crop production that characterised Zimbabwe's 2024 to 2025 growing season, and with the record gold and agricultural export earnings that reinforced foreign currency inflows and aggregate demand throughout the year.

The Chairperson's statement pattern observed across multiple ZSE-listed companies in 2025 attributing improved consumer spending to agricultural and mining-led income growth was reflected precisely in what the GDP data confirms: agriculture was the backbone of Zimbabwe's 2025 growth story, and it held that position through the fourth quarter without any sign of exhaustion.

Mining and quarrying remained the single largest contributing sector to GDP in Q4 2025, accounting for 15.41% of total value added, consistent with 15.87% in Q2 and 15.92% in Q3. The stability of that share across the year reflects the sustained production levels and favourable international pricing for gold that the Chairperson's statement in the ZimStat presentation itself cites as a driver of foreign currency inflows and liquidity.

Mining's 15.41% contribution in Q4, combined with manufacturing's 14.59% and wholesale and retail trade's 11.11%, means that the three most productive sectors of Zimbabwe's economy collectively account for over 41% of national output, providing a relatively concentrated but resilient base for the growth numbers the headline figures reflect.

Manufacturing's contribution of 14.59% in Q4 was essentially flat from 14.60% in Q2 and 14.82% in Q3, indicating that despite the infrastructure pressures documented in the quarter, the sector held its share of national output. Finance and insurance contributed 10.70% in Q4, broadly consistent with its 11.15% contribution in Q3, reflecting the sector's stability as a proportion of value added even as total output growth moderated.

Five sectors together, mining, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, agriculture, and finance and insurance, account for 62.96% of Zimbabwe's GDP in Q4 2025. That concentration is a structural characteristic of the economy, but it is also a source of stability: strong performance in any two or three of those five sectors is sufficient to sustain positive headline growth, as the 2025 data demonstrates.

Placing 2025 in the context of 2024 is analytically important. The 2024 quarterly year-on-year sequence read negative 0.11%, positive 0.21%, 2.19%, and 4.37%. The 2025 sequence of 3.25%, 11.45%, 10.65%, and 7.04% represents a step-change in the economy's growth profile.

The Q2 2025 surge to 11.45% year on year and 9.12% quarter on quarter was the single strongest quarterly performance in the dataset, reflecting the convergence of record tobacco output, strong gold production, favourable agricultural conditions, and the base effect from weak Q2 2024 comparators.

The 7.04% Q4 2025 figure is lower than Q2 and Q3, but it is substantially higher than any single quarter of 2024, and it represents consolidation of gains rather than reversal of them.

GDP at constant 2023 prices followed a consistent upward path through 2025: ZWG 17.3 billion in Q1, ZWG 18.8 billion in Q2, ZWG 19.0 billion in Q3, and ZWG 19.1 billion in Q4. Each quarter was higher than the last in real terms. The pace of growth slowed, but the direction never reversed. That is the headline the full-year constant price series supports.

However, the Q4 data contains two significant sector-level readings that the positive headline should not obscure, because both carry implications for the 2026 trajectory. Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply contracted 18.37% quarter on quarter in Q4, following growth of 6.04% in Q3 and 18.17% in Q2. Water supply contracted 14.16% in the same quarter.

Both infrastructure sectors reversed sharply in Q4 after strong mid-year performance, and both represent enabling inputs for manufacturing, mining, and services rather than standalone contributors. The quarter-on-quarter growth rate for the entire economy in Q4 was 0.34%, down from 1.08% in Q3 and 9.12% in Q2. The economy was essentially flat in real sequential terms in the final three months of 2025.

These readings do not diminish the full-year achievement, but they define the risk to the 2026 outlook clearly. The 2025 growth story was substantially driven by agriculture's record performance and mining's high output and favourable pricing. If the 2025 to 2026 agricultural season delivers a more modest harvest, and if electricity supply does not recover from its Q4 contraction, the economy enters 2026 without the two engines that sustained the headline numbers through the second and third quarters.

The 7.04% Q4 year-on-year figure is the strongest growth reading in 2024's comparable period, and it confirms 2025 as Zimbabwe's best growth year since the multi-currency framework stabilised the macroeconomic environment.

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