In Zimbabwe, achievement is often measured by proximity to certificates. The more letters that trail one’s name, the greater the assumed competence. Academic accomplishment has become currency and shield, an unquestioned proxy for intelligence, leadership potential and institutional trust.
Yet, beneath this reverence for credentials lies a quieter crisis, an economy and governance ecosystem constrained not by lack of talent, but by a narrowing of imagination. We have built systems that reward familiarity over fluency, repetition over renewal and local comfort over global comprehension. In doing so, we have mistaken qualification for wisdom and experience for exposure.
This imbalance is not abstract. It plays out daily in recruitment panels that dismiss Zimbabwean returnees as “overqualified” and “underexposed” to local realities, even when those returnees have navigated more complex systems than the ones they are seeking to serve.
It appears in boardrooms where decision-makers replicate strategies that failed before, simply because they are known. It surfaces in public institutions that distrust ideas not because they are flawed, but because they originate beyond the mental borders of those in authority. The result is a form of institutional claustrophobia that is well credentialed, yet intellectually under-ventilated.
Knowledge hardens into dogma
True qualification is not the accumulation of certificates alone. It is a mosaic built from lived practice, cross-cultural literacy, ethical discernment and the humility to recognise the limits of one’s own worldview. Academic training matters. It disciplines the mind, sharpens analysis and transmits accumulated knowledge. But without exposure, the testing of ideas against unfamiliar environments, diverse value systems and real constraints, knowledge hardens into dogma. Theory illuminates possibility, whereas, exposure teaches consequence.
Inoculation vs siloed thinking
Zimbabwe’s overemphasis on formal credentials has produced a generation of decision-makers fluent in abstraction, but underprepared for complexity. Many have never had to negotiate meaning across cultures, lead without authority or adapt strategy when assumptions collapse.
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Yet these are precisely the skills required in a volatile, resource constrained economy where resilience, not orthodoxy, determines survival. Exposure, in this sense, acts as intellectual inoculation. It challenges routine thinking, unsettles complacency and forces leaders to confront the friction between intent and outcome.
Exposure reshapes imagination before it refines competence. Those who have worked across borders, whether geographic, cultural or institutional, tend to develop an expanded sense of what is possible.
Zimbabwe’s diasporic professionals, often dismissed as disconnected, carry tacit knowledge that cannot be taught in classrooms, such as, how trust is built among strangers, how accountability functions without coercion, how systems respond to incentives rather than rhetoric. They understand that efficiency is cultural, that governance is relational and that progress depends as much on social architecture as on policy design.
Exposure shapes imagination
Intercultural fluency is not cosmetic, it is operational. Leaders who have navigated different contexts read soft signals more accurately. They detect resistance before it hardens, opportunity before it becomes obvious. This fluency lowers the cost of collaboration, accelerates coalition building and improves institutional adaptability.
Yet many Zimbabwean organisations continue to treat such exposure as optional, even suspect, preferring leaders whose experience mirrors existing norms. In doing so, they confuse predictability with competence.
Exposure also refines how problems are framed. In insulated environments, challenges are often reduced to technical deficits, such as, lack of funding, skills or compliance. But exposure teaches systems thinking. It reveals how incentives interact, how informal economies compensate for institutional gaps and how well-intended policies often produce unintended harm.
Leaders who have witnessed multiple governance models learn that problems rarely reside where they first appear. This capacity to reframe, to shift from inputs to outcomes, from symptoms to structures, is indispensable in a country grappling with layered economic and social constraints.
Equally important is the ethical expansion that accompanies exposure. Encountering different ways of organising life enlarges moral imagination. It compels leaders to weigh dignity alongside efficiency, sustainability alongside speed.
Ethical judgment matures when one has seen the human cost of expediency elsewhere. Yet, paradoxically, Zimbabwe’s human resources practices often exclude returnees whose exposure might challenge entrenched ethical shortcuts. Gatekeeping masquerades as prudence, while stagnation deepens.
Minimises groupthink, biases
The benefits of exposure are neither theoretical nor elitist. They manifest concretely in reduced groupthink, greater tolerance for dissent and a willingness to learn iteratively rather than pursue grand but brittle solutions.
Leaders who have operated in diverse environments are less threatened by alternative viewpoints because their authority is not anchored in being right, but in being responsive. They ask better questions, design with contingency in mind and recognise that progress is rarely linear.
In entrepreneurial contexts, exposure fuels creative recombination, that is, the ability to repurpose limited resources in novel ways. Zimbabwe’s economy, defined by constraint, should prize this skill above all others.
A manager who has seen how informal markets innovate under pressure, say in Mumbai, could design supply chains and partnerships that formal models overlook.
In governance, exposure enables inclusive policymaking. Citizens are more likely to trust institutions led by individuals who recognise shared humanity across class, region and ethnicity. Legitimacy, after all, is relational.
Redefine credentialed achievement
For Zimbabwe to unlock these advantages, institutions must redefine what counts as achievement. Credentialism must give way to a broader conception of competence that integrates experiential learning and cross context engagement.
Universities should embed exposure into curricula, not as electives, but as core requirements. Partnerships with rural communities, SMEs and civic organisations can ground theory in lived reality. Case studies should emerge from Zimbabwe’s own environmental, agricultural and urban challenges, paired with comparative international examples that encourage critical synthesis rather than imitation.
Professional bodies, too, must evolve. Experiential credentials, such as, fieldwork, community impact, stakeholder engagement, etcetera, should complement examinations. In public administration, rotational programmes across ministries and communities could cultivate officials who understand policy consequences beyond spreadsheets. Such reforms would not dilute rigor, but simply deepen it.
Must not be for the select few
Crucially, exposure must not become the privilege of a cosmopolitan few. Local exposure matters as much as international exposure.
Zimbabwe’s urban professionals often know more about distant cities than about rural districts that sustain the nation. A two-way exchange of knowledge, between urban and rural, formal and informal, would surface indigenous resilience strategies, ecological wisdom and social innovations too often ignored. Exposure should democratise understanding, not reinforce hierarchy.
Education systems bear responsibility for nurturing minds that value exposure without abandoning discipline. Critical pedagogy must accompany technical training, encouraging students to test assumptions and revise conclusions in light of experience.
Mentorship programmes linking early career professionals with seasoned practitioners across sectors can accelerate judgment formation. Media literacy, too, is essential for equipping citizens to navigate competing narratives and ethical complexity.
Exposure deepens sustained curiosity and adaptive learning
Ultimately, Zimbabwe must recalibrate how it defines success. Degrees and titles are visible markers, but they are insufficient proxies for capability. Quiet competence, the kind forged through diverse experiences, such as, sustained curiosity and adaptive learning, deserves recognition. Public discourse should celebrate leaders who listen more than they proclaim, who admit uncertainty and seek counsel across boundaries. In organisations where decision-makers model humility, trust deepens and collective action becomes possible even amid uncertainty.
Conclusion
The argument, then, is not against academic qualification. It is against sufficiency. Credentials are necessary but incomplete. Exposure expands cognitive horizons, enriches mental models and sharpens judgment. By institutionalising meaningful exposure across education, professional development and governance, Zimbabwe could cultivate leaders capable of steering the nation from stagnation toward resilient, inclusive progress.
This requires deliberate action, amongst others, rewarding intercultural fluency, reframing problems through diverse lenses and embedding exposure as a shared social value. Only then can qualification mature into wisdom, familiarity give way to possibility and shared value embedded in policy, pedagogy and practice.
- Ndoro-Mkombachoto is a former academic and banker. She is the chairperson of NetOne Financial Services, a subsidiary of NetOne Telecomms. She has consulted widely in strategy, entrepreneurship, private sector development, financial literacy/inclusion for firms that include Seed Co Africa, Hwange Colliery, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Standard Bank of South Africa Home Loans, International Finance Corporation/World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, United States Agency for International Development, Danish International Development Agency, Canadian International Development Agency, Kellogg Foundation. Ndoro-Mkombachoto is a writer, property investor, manufacturer and keen gardener. Her podcast on YouTube is @HeartfeltWithGloria. — +263 7713362177/ gloria@ sustainwisestrategies.co.za.
