Country profile - ZWE

Corruption in Zimbabwe

10 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 54.5 (2022).

Grand: 36.9 Petty: 57.8 Latest observed: 2021

Zimbabwe: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Zimbabwe is Harare (47.2/100), and the least corrupt is Matebeleland South (63.3/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 10 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Zimbabwe's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 54.5/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Harare (SCI 47.2/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Matebeleland South (SCI 63.3/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 36.9/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 57.8/100 (last directly observed in 2021).
  • Trend: Zimbabwe's SCI moved from 69.5/100 (1995) to 54.5/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 10 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Zimbabwe compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Zimbabwe into 10 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 54.5 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 23 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -1.3 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 10 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

71 48 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (10)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Harare ZWEr109 1995-2022 47.2
2 Manicaland ZWEr101 1995-2022 47.4
3 Mashonaland East ZWEr103 1995-2022 47.8
4 Bulawayo ZWEr110 1995-2022 52.1
5 Midlands ZWEr107 1995-2022 56.1
6 Mashonaland Central ZWEr102 1995-2022 56.6
7 Masvingo ZWEr108 1995-2022 58.1
8 Mashonaland West ZWEr104 1995-2022 58.2
9 Matebeleland North ZWEr105 1995-2022 59.1
10 Matebeleland South ZWEr106 1995-2022 63.3

Download Zimbabwe

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download ZWE.csv