Sequencing Interventions for Stakeholder-Assessed Foreign-Currency Value Retention in Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Export Chain

Abstract

Zimbabwe’s tobacco sector generates substantial export earnings, yet production growth does not necessarily translate into retained foreign-currency value at the domestic level. This study examines how stakeholders diagnose value-retention constraints and sequence feasible interventions. A qualitatively driven embedded single-case design integrates 40 interviews across eight stakeholder groups, a 400-extract evidence matrix, descriptive constraint and intervention assessments, and documentary triangulation. Stakeholders identified financing architecture, curing quality, grading transparency, traceability, electricity reliability, processing readiness, market access, and coordination as interdependent conditions shaping value-retention potential. Selective processing expansion was considered highly consequential but less feasible and riskier than improvements in quality, grading, traceability, and coordination. The study contributes a bounded distributed capability-readiness mechanism and a safeguard-governed stage-gate framework. It explains why high-impact interventions may remain premature when complementary capabilities are dispersed across independent actors and shows how responsible upgrading can progress from foundational capabilities to verified readiness and selective expansion.