The first sign was not a policy paper. It was a Kose driver on WhatsApp telling me his car had been impounded. Then another. Then the fines, which for a driver doing a handful of rides a day can erase the week.
Kose is a consumer super-app. Payments, merchant services, and e-hailing. The e-hailing leg was supposed to be the simple part: a driver earns, a passenger gets home, we take a small cut. It stopped being simple the moment our drivers started meeting the state at roadblocks.
The problem was never Kose
Nobody had written specific rules for app-based ride-hailing in Zimbabwe. So a driver on Kose, InDrive or Bolt picking up a passenger sat in a space where different agencies read the law differently. Municipal police read it one way. Traffic police another. The driver read it as arrest, impound, fine.
That kills a marketplace fast. Drivers go dark. Passengers will not book a service that gets their driver arrested. And you cannot recruit new drivers when you cannot promise them the ride is lawful.
I could have treated this as a Kose problem and gone looking for a Kose exemption. That would have failed. Every operator in Harare was being hit by the same thing. When every player in a market is hurt by the same thing, you are not looking at a company problem. You are looking at a gap in the law. Gaps in the law need sector answers.
One conversation
I took it to Sekai Kuvarika at the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries. CZI is not a transport lobby. It represents industry as a whole, which is exactly why it mattered. I did not pitch it as one startup complaining. I pitched it as a new sector emerging and being crushed by regulatory uncertainty, with drivers paying the price.
She listened, and she opened a door I could not have opened on my own: a stakeholders consultative meeting at the Office of the President and Cabinet on the ease of doing business for e-hailing.
The room, 19 August
I walked in outnumbered. OPC. Ministry of Transport. Ministry of Finance. Ministry of Local Government. Ministry of Home Affairs. ZIMRA. VID. CVR. ZRP. The City of Harare, with Mayor Mafume there in person. Residents associations. On the operator side, Prevail Group’s Tap and Go, and me, there for Kose and speaking for fellow operators.
Most of the time tinotyira kure. We live in our heads about what government will say. What I expected was a defence of the status quo. What I got was a government stating its position plainly: it will not be the impediment to emerging sectors and economic growth.
The commitments were specific. The Ministry of Transport confirmed work was already underway to close the lacuna. ZIMRA offered to educate operators and drivers on their tax obligations rather than simply penalise them. VID offered group defensive driving training and certification, and a more convenient vehicle fitness testing approach. CVR offered support with vehicle licence verification. Mayor Mafume acknowledged the legal gap and committed that the City of Harare will comply the moment a directive cures it.
At the close, I was tasked, working with CZI, to bring operators together and lead the drafting of an industry self-regulation position paper. I accepted without hesitation.
What we built in three weeks
That task became the Zimbabwe E-hailing Association. ZEHA was not a lobby I decided to start. It is the sector’s answer to a question government asked. A lobby asks for exceptions. An association offers rules.
The position paper went to OPC as a seventeen-page document. ZEHA now stands under a written constitution, facilitated in formation by CZI. Members sign a Code of twelve commitments that bind by contract on signature, ahead of any gazetting: a Driver Verification Standard built on facial identity match, licence checks, VID defensive driving certification, police clearance and vehicle fitness; POTRAZ data controller licensing; tax cooperation with ZIMRA; in-app SOS and live trip sharing; and a free, independent Ombudsman. The piece I care most about is the Shared Safety Registry. A driver removed by one platform for assault or dangerous driving cannot simply join a competitor. Nothing on the statute book provides that today. Self-regulation delivers it first.
In return we asked government for five things that cost the fiscus nothing: recognition of ZEHA as the industry counterpart; an interim directive pausing arrests and impoundments of drivers on registered, compliant platforms; dedicated licence classes for platform operators and e-hailing drivers; a one-stop approvals window with proportionate fees; and a six to twelve month transition for existing drivers to regularise.
Cabinet answered
On 8 September the post-Cabinet brief named the sector by name: Bolt, InDrive, Tap and Go, GoFaster and Kose, providing convenient, affordable services and employment for youths, but facing regulatory challenges. Cabinet approved Interim Transitional Measures: a five-month moratorium, development of a self-regulating framework, registration of providers, operators and drivers with ZIMRA, and new regulations from the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development, in line with NDS2.
Read that against what we asked for. The moratorium is the transition period. The self-regulating framework is ZEHA. ZIMRA registration was already a condition of our Code. Three weeks from a conversation to a Cabinet decision.
What Kose had to unlearn
Building Kose taught me to move fast on thin information. Government engagement punishes that. It rewards showing up organised, specific and ready to own the outcome.
The other thing I had to set down was the founder instinct to protect the company first. If I had gone into OPC as the Kose CEO asking for Kose relief, I would have got nothing. Going in as an operator speaking for all operators is what made the room listen. Government is not a wall. It is a table.
So Kose now moves at sector speed. We are on the founding register as a platform operator, going through the same verification as everyone else. The 180-day roadmap runs constitute, verify, operate, certify, with a monthly return to government along the way. The sector, not one company, owns the win.
The honest cost
Five months is long when your drivers are still nervous at roadblocks today. A Cabinet decision buys goodwill and runway, not certainty, and the interim directive that would actually stop a municipal officer this afternoon has not yet been issued. Organising a sector also means spending founder hours on a constitution, a Code, a register and a website that earn Kose nothing directly and benefit Bolt and InDrive equally, and taking on a founding presidency that will outlast any commercial advantage it could give me. I am doing it anyway, because hiding does not build a business and fighting breaks one. Engagement is the only option that leaves a sector standing at the end.
