The City of Bulawayo 2020-2024 strategy is anchored on seven pillars which form the key results areas of the City Council. It is anticipated that these pillars will lead the organization towards achieving the City’s vision, National Vision 2030 and ultimately the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The City of Bulawayo’s strategic goals or corporate priorities are as follows; sustainable institutional resources, private sector led economic renewal, renewed public infrastructure and quality utilities, excellent modernized social services and safe secure environment, good governance, leadership excellence, resilient human capital, service excellence: engaged empowered and satisfied stakeholders and managing the business of the City.

The City’s 2020-2024 strategy pursues the vigorous revitalisation of economic productivity, through inter alia comprehensive local economic development planning and a renewed and scaled up partnership with the private sector.

Speaking to Masiye Phambili, the City’s Economic Development Officer Mr Kholisani Moyo said “Framing a compelling sustainable direction in the midst of major capacity constraints and a demanding and unpredictable operating climate for local governance takes tremendous commitment and dedication; it needs all the organizational resources, partner support, stakeholder involvement and collective vision that the city can generate now, more than ever, noting that the ‘new normal’ required a resilient, flexible and practical strategy that will transition the City of Bulawayo to a global Smart City.

He added that the Corporate strategic planning process stretched over a couple of months and entailed facilitated pre-planning research that appraised the long term City Master Plan as read with other strategic material; the national Vision 2030; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the constitutional provision for a devolved system of governance; SADC regional protocols and the Transitional Stabilisation Program (TSP). These formed the guiding radar and the broader strategic architecture which further informed the scope and direction of Council in the next five years.

To craft the strategy, stakeholder consultations were facilitated that included strategic deliberations with the representatives of residents and rate payers, business, civil society and faith based organisations, with partners, policy makers and council management. Further consultation workshops were held with managers and directors of each of the council’s seven departments.

“The strategy conversation itself involved the strategy formulation which defined the vision, mission and values of the City of Bulawayo and reflected deeply on the external scenarios that defined the operating environment of the council and the current milestones and challenges of the local authority,” Mr Moyo said.

He added that stakeholders had further undertaken an engaging cause – effect problem analysis which had enabled a collective determination of key thematic perspectives, strategic goals (SGs) and strategic objectives (SOs) for the ensuing 5 year term.

“A results oriented framework of implementation was developed on the basis of reducing corporate objectives into their component strategic initiatives (SIs) and performance measures (PMs). In addition, departmental mandates and work plans were crafted to follow and deliver their respective strategic initiatives as expressed by the corporate strategy,” said Mr Moyo.

The 8 major tasks/steps taken towards the corporate strategy coordination process were as follows:

• i. Stakeholder change management and strategic planning workshop: The Stakeholder change management and strategic planning workshop.
• ii. Integrated Results Based Management/ Stop to Start Strategy: The Integrated Results Based Management/ Stop to Start Strategy workshop.
• iii. Implementation of preparatory workshop: The Implementation of preparatory workshop.
• iv. Strategic Workshop: The Strategic Workshop was held in Matopo holiday resort.
• v. Adoption of Corporate Strategy: The corporate strategy was adopted by Council on the 24th of February 2020.
• vi. Introduction of the marketing framework to corporate strategy: Key to the successful implementation of corporate strategy is the development of a marketing framework and strategy. The Economic Development Unit has engaged the Procurement section to procure the services of an independent consultant to craft the marketing framework for Bulawayo City Council Corporate Strategy. The consultant will do the marketing framework in three stages, in which the first stage of carrying out a research study on the baseline brand and perception analysis is expected to be done before the end of the year, and the other stages completed early next year.

The rationale of carrying a marketing framework and strategy is to:

• • Define and manage Bulawayo as a brand;
• • Distinguish it and make it attractive;
• • Help to focus and prioritise developmental and investment efforts;
• • Create a captive market for companies to benefit from;
• • Engender civic pride which reduces transactional costs;
• • Create a strong employer brand to attract and retain the best talent;
• • Destroy fragmented execution and organisational silos; and
• • Commercialise brand to make money.

vii. Rolling out of strategy: The strategy was thus disseminated on a Departmental basis during the month of November 2020, to allow all employees to have an appreciation of the corporate strategy.

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