Moving to Harare

Mining and mining services

Zimplats, Unki, Caledonia, Bikita Minerals, Kuvimba

Platinum, gold, chrome and — since the battery-metals boom — lithium. The pits are in the provinces; the head offices, brokers, lawyers and engineering firms are in Harare, which is where the employment for a foreign professional is.

Telecoms and mobile money

Econet Wireless, EcoCash, Cassava, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, NetOne

Econet is the dominant network and EcoCash is the default way small money moves. The group has spun out fintech and fibre businesses that operate across the continent from a Harare base.

Tobacco and agriculture

Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, auction floors, Tanganda, Seed Co

Flue-cured tobacco is one of Zimbabwe's largest export earners and the auction floors are in Harare. The selling season from roughly February sets the rhythm of the city's cash economy.

Financial services

CBZ, FBC, NMB, Old Mutual Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Stock Exchange

The ZSE trades in ZWG; the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange trades the same kind of company in US dollars. A finance job here means being fluent in both books at once.

Development, diplomacy and NGOs

UN agencies, embassies, major INGOs, donor programmes

A large, long-established sector concentrated in the northern suburbs, and the single most common route into Harare for a non-Zimbabwean professional.

Manufacturing and FMCG

Delta Corporation, Innscor, National Foods, Dairibord

Zimbabwe's remaining industrial base is concentrated in Harare's south-western factory belt — brewing, milling, dairy and fast-moving consumer goods, mostly serving the domestic market.

Culture · Mbare

The country's largest market: produce trucked in from every province, secondhand clothes by the bale, and the long-distance bus terminus next door.

Local tip: Go in the morning with a Zimbabwean colleague the first time, carry small notes and nothing in your back pocket. It is the single best hour you can spend understanding how the country actually feeds itself.

Nature · Hillside, south-east of the centre

Two hundred and sixty-odd hectares of miombo woodland inside the city, with giraffe, zebra and eland grazing about ten minutes from the CBD.

Local tip: Almost no visitor knows it exists. Walk or ride the trails early, then have breakfast at the tea garden. That a genuine game area survives inside Harare is a fact about this city nowhere else quite matches.

Culture · Beside Harare Gardens

The permanent home of Zimbabwean stone sculpture — the Shona sculpture movement is the country's most internationally recognised art form.

Local tip: The sculpture garden is the real collection. Go on a weekday when it is quiet, and if a piece stops you, ask about the artist — many are still working and several studios take visitors.

Landmark · Epworth, east of the city

The granite formations that appear on Zimbabwe's banknotes, balanced improbably on each other on the edge of a dense settlement.

Local tip: Bring a note with you and hold it up against the rocks — that is the point of the trip. Go with someone local; it sits inside a residential area rather than a park.

Neighborhood · North-west of the centre

Jacaranda streets, the Avondale flea market, cafés and the closest thing Harare has to a walkable district.

Local tip: The Sunday market at Doon Estate and the Avondale shops are where the city's creative and NGO crowd overlap. Good place to find a flat share and better people to ask about landlords.

Nature · About 30 km north

A vast granite whaleback you can walk up in twenty minutes, with San rock paintings in a cave near the summit and the whole Highveld laid out below.

Local tip: Do it in the late afternoon in the dry season and take water — there is no shade on the rock. Pay the entry fee at the gate rather than to anyone who offers to guide you on the road.