By Jonathan Mbiriyamveka
Dr Gift Machengete, the Director General of the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has delivered an unusually blunt warning to his own institution and to government: good intentions are not evidence, and regulators must not reject findings simply because they are inconvenient.
Dr Machengete made the remarks at a POTRAZ Research Dissemination Workshop in Harare, where two commissioned studies were presented — one on the impact of ICT on agricultural productivity in Zimbabwe, and another on digital engagement among persons with disabilities.
The speech was notable less for what it announced than for how it framed the act of regulation itself.
Dr Machengete opened by describing two worlds with which every regulator must contend: “the world of what is, and the world of what ought to be.”
Regulation, he argued, cannot begin in the aspirational world. “Before we can decide where we should go, we must know where we actually are,” he said.
“Good intentions are not evidence”
The Director General’s central argument was epistemological — a word he used deliberately. He posed the question of how regulators know what they claim to know.
“When we say that people are connected, how do we know?” he asked. “When we say that ICT is improving productivity, what is our evidence? When we say that our digital transformation is inclusive, inclusive of whom, and measured how?”
He then delivered the line that is likely to define coverage of the event.
“However noble our intentions may be, good intentions are not evidence, anecdotes are not data, and assumptions are certainly not a sound basis for regulation.”
For a regulator to state publicly that assumptions are not a basis for regulation is significant. It implies that assumptions have, at times, served as exactly that.
The thermometer warning
Dr Machengete went further, anticipating that research will not always produce findings that institutions welcome.
“Sometimes the evidence will confirm what we believe. Sometimes it will reveal something we had not seen. And, occasionally, it will tell us something we would rather not hear,” he said.
“When that happens, we must resist the temptation to argue with the thermometer simply because we do not like the temperature.”
The metaphor is pointed. A thermometer does not produce the fever it measures. To argue with it is to confuse the messenger with the message — and Dr Machengete‘s implication is that regulators, including his own, must accept findings even when they contradict official narratives.
Coverage is not inclusion
The Director General used the two studies to illustrate a distinction he said is too often blurred: the difference between the presence of technology and its meaningful use.
“Take agriculture,” he said. “We can count base stations. We can measure network coverage. We can report Internet penetration.
“But those figures, important as they are, do not necessarily tell us whether a farmer is obtaining better market information, accessing financial services, improving yields, reducing costs or earning more because of connectivity.”
He applied the same logic to persons with disabilities.
“A service may be available online and yet remain inaccessible. A network may reach a community, while the opportunities carried by that network remain beyond the reach of some of its people.”
He then set out a four-part test for digital inclusion that goes beyond infrastructure metrics: people must be able to “access it, afford it, use it and derive meaningful benefit from it.”
A challenge to the workshop
Dr Machengete closed by asking participants not to treat the workshop as a formality.
“I invite you to interrogate the evidence,” he said. “Ask whether the methodology supports the conclusions. Ask what the data reveals, what it does not reveal, and what further questions it raises.”
He called for action in three directions: strengthen what is working where evidence confirms assumptions, respond where gaps are identified, and — most pointedly — have “the intellectual courage to change course” where evidence challenges long-held beliefs.
“That which is must not end with the research report,” he said. “It must inform policy, regulation, investment and implementation.”
Why it matters
Dr Gift Machengete‘s remarks come amid a national push toward Vision 2030 and the National Development Strategy 2, both of which rest heavily on digital transformation as a driver of economic growth. Zimbabwe has reported steady gains in mobile penetration and network coverage in recent years.
The Director General’s speech does not dispute those gains. It questions whether they are the right measures — and whether the benefits they imply are reaching the people policy intends to serve.
Whether his call for evidence-led regulation translates into changed policy will be tested in the months ahead. For now, the commitment is on the record, and the standard has been set publicly.
As Dr Gift Machengete put it: “The purpose of research is not to make us more certain of what we already believe. It is to bring us closer to the truth of what actually is.”
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