Becoming The Muse

Coffee With Tenderpreneurship

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to tangle of words, warm your hands by the fire, its kinda cold… for us anyway. Had a bit of laugh during an online meeting, when I discovered our temperatures were exactly the same, yet for us winter is wintering, while for them it’s a sunny summer day, how does 15.5°C (60F) feel to you?

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that it’s a well-known fact that governments tend to be massive spenders and contract out a significant amount of work. Anyone who fancies themselves an ambitious entrepreneur, would do well to figure out how to get the government as a client and get awarded substantial contracts.

Somewhere along the line, it was figured out that it wouldn’t be prudent for a government directly to have authority to procure goods and services under its own cognisance, as that might result in abuse of the system. Public funds power government expenditure so transparency in its procurement is required. In Zimbabwe, we have a Procurement Regulatory Authority (PRAZ) which is supposed to handle the bureaucracy of tenders.

In a perfect world, if the government requires anything, a public tender is published through PRAZ. Contractors that meet regulatory approval, apply for the tender and after screenings, a selection is made on whom the tender goes to.

Easy peasy right? Wrong, first of all the requirements for one to even be considered for application while standard, arent a walk in the park, you will need to be properly registered, incorporated, with all your tax papers in order and all this in a country that seems as if it punishes formal businesses for their compliance rather than encourage regularistion, small surprise, there’s so much informal businesses because its usually cheaper and less stressful to pay a fine and or bribe than to pay your taxes.

How do I know this? Because I attempted a bit of entrepreneurship, set up an entity, hoping to also get a small bite on a piece of this pie, which for others seems to be a gift that keeps giving… I put in a significant amount of time and effort and didn’t get so much as a nibble, and have nothing to show for it, except expired tax clearances and a bank account overdrawn by bank charges.

and then… I put up the advert for my "entrepreneurial business " in the Thursday business newspaper.
The first call I got was from ZIMRA

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) May 20, 2017

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the world of tenders is a competitive world, that only opens to a select few who either have financial muscle to offer lucrative incentives to ensure favourable outcomes, while others tap into their proximity to powerful individuals usually political, to influence things in their favour.

Tenderpreneurs are the sort of entrepreneurs who know how to secure lucrative tenders, while some deals are above board, there’s a tendency to lean towards corrupt practices of grossly inflated figures for minimal delivery or none at all…

A 2015 contract of $172.8 million USD to build a 100MW solar installation in Gwanda to help alleviate electricity challenges, is still undeveloped 10 years, several million dollars and court cases later. Meanwhile, a month ago our northern neighbour, Zambia commissioned the 100MW Chisamba Solar project which cost 100 million (30 Million put up by ZESCO and the other 70% backed by Stanbic)

Meanwhile, here, the finance minister couldn’t give a comprehensive explanation of how our flagship Trabablas Interchange that was projected to cost $85 million, gobbled up US$114 million, comprising of US$26 million from the IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and US$88m in loans from private contractors. At least its complete and its too late to think about how that budget could have better served the people, for example towards our dire state of health services.

 Fortunately, the government is already working on renovating the health services, work at Parirenyetwa Hospital is progressing speedily, which would imply quite a lot of funding was pumped into it. I suspect it might be a little bit too much, and to justify expenditure, they are now adding some unessential features… I mean if they were installing a swimming pool for the physiotherapy and rehabilitation wing, I might understand, but for the staff… hmmm I don’t know, feels like a mixture of aesthetics and posturing than for practical reasons, given previous water challenges.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that a fire broke out at a furniture home industry complex in Glenview Area 8. Its strange that fires happen there almost every year. You would think that by now they would have put things in place to make sure that a fire doesn’t cause excessive damage, unless there is something going on behind the scenes. Some say its insurance fraud, others claim its a deliberate attempt to keep the industry from growing, as its been cited as a contributor to a lot of free funds in circulation and fuelling the black market.

The incident was declared a national disaster and a new complex to be built starting in September. Wont take a genius to predict that there is a sizeable tender to build a modern SME complex with proper infrastructure… Were I, a conspiracy theorist, I would postulate that a lifestyle audit of whoever got the contract, might prove… illuminating.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that in October 2024, a fire broke out Mbare Traders market, with the incident declared a national disaster. The area was rebuilt as Mbare Musika Market Hub, a state-of-the-art vending area, which is quite a pretty cool upgrade but word on the street is that the rentals for stalls there are beyond the reach of the ordinary vendor and its fast becoming a white elephant.

Yeah, sometimes it feels like the government isn’t in touch with what people really need beyond being targets to better squeeze taxes out of… Anyway whats been going on in your neck of the woods.

~B