IFIT / innovations in peace negotiations and conflict resolution

Zimbabwe Bottom-Up Platform

The Zimbabwe Bottom-Up Platform (Z-BUP) is a coalition of local civil society and community-based organisations working to strengthen community dialogue as a catalyst for inclusive social, economic and political transformation in Zimbabwe.

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Why Community Dialogue Matters

National-level dialogues in Zimbabwe have struggled to sustain momentum and achieve lasting impact. By contrast, local-level dialogues have flourished, enabling communities to address everyday challenges and resolve disputes. These processes reflect a bottom-up approach where local actors are not just participants, but drivers of constructive engagement and change.

Connecting Local Dialogue Initiatives

Z-BUP is a coordination, learning and action platform that connects local organisations facilitating dialogues across the country. Building on Zimbabwe’s rich tradition of community-level dialogue, our members work to strengthen dialogue practices, enhance participant capacities, and ensure that local priorities directly shape national processes.

A Community-Anchored Approach

Z-BUP’s bottom-up dialogue framework begins at the community level, where local issues are identified, discussed, and refined through inclusive participation. By fostering horizontal linkages across communities, we enable shared learning, alignment of priorities, and the strengthening of locally driven dialogue processes.

Bridging Local to National

Building on these community foundations, Z-BUP connects local dialogues to district, provincial, and national platforms. Through coordinated support and structured pathways, we ensure that community perspectives are elevated, aligned across regions, and meaningfully inform broader dialogue and national decision-making processes.

Recent Publications

Promoting Successful and Sustainable Community Dialogue Outcomes: A Practitioner’s Toolkit for Zimbabwe

This toolkit supports dialogue practitioners in promoting successful and sustainable outcomes for community dialogues across Zimbabwe. It draws on insights from 13 cases conducted nationwide between 2018 and 2023, and offers practical tools for stakeholder mapping, issue identification, dialogue formats (e.g. roundtables, town halls), facilitation guidance, and frameworks for planning, implementation, and follow-up.

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Promoting Bottom-up Dialogue: A Study of Community-Level Dialogue Experiences in Zimbabwe

This report examines diverse community dialogues that took place between 2017 and 2023 at the ward, village and district level in Zimbabwe. Identifying successful strategies for non-partisan dialogue, the report outlines how they might be replicated at the national level to catalyse meaningful issue-based dialogue among key actors, including political ones.

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