2025/12/10 by Abraham R Matamanda, Hussein Mugumbate, Johannes I Bhanye +1
paper · doi:10.1177/00219096251401594
crossref issued 2025/12/10 · crossref published 2025/12/10 · crossref published-online 2025/12/10 · crossref created 2025/12/11 · crossref deposited 2026/07/31 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · crossref published-print 2026/08/01
This article applies the left-behind places (LBPs) framework to explain how colonial planning legacies and post-colonial politics jointly reproduce marginalization in Chitungwiza. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and 10 key-informant interviews, complemented by municipal plans and secondary sources, we show that Chitungwiza’s economy is predominantly survivalist yet entrepreneurial, with firms embedded in dense social networks and uneven value-chain linkages to Harare. We (1) map empirical themes (markets, infrastructure, governance, finance, social capital) onto LBPs drivers (economic, infrastructural, political-institutional and socio-cultural), (2) identify contradictions, for example, digital uptake and formalization aspirations alongside deliberate small-scale strategies to avoid regulatory costs and (3) propose spatial governance and financial instruments to enable inclusive upgrading.