Mary Mundeya
Harare — For nine consecutive seasons, Serina Matenga, a smallholder tobacco farmer in Headlands, a farming bastion in Manicaland province, has watched the woodland around her homestead recede.
Trees that once buffered her fields now vanish year after year, cut to feed tobacco curing barns that keep her livelihood afloat.
And for nine years, she has paid for their non-existent restoration.
On every tobacco sales voucher, a deduction appears, 0.75 percent of her earnings, labelled “Afforestation Levy.”
“It’s like buying air,” Matenga said. “You see the price on the voucher, you pay it, but you receive nothing you can hold or point to. We are being taxed for nothing.”
For Matenga and more than 90,000 tobacco farmers nationwide, that “air” amounts to a multi-million-dollar environmental levy that has delivered almost no trees, no measurable forest recovery and no tangible benefit to the communities financing it.
An investigation by She Corresponds Africa, with support from Information for Development Trust (IDT), drawing on parliamentary records, financial disclosures, satellite imagery, field observations and farmer testimonies shows the levy’s collapse was always coming.
It was never grounded in law but framed as an ambitious and blind policy vulnerable to manipulation and non-accountability.
Collected since 2015, the tobacco afforestation levy has drifted through a decade of administrative paralysis, delayed and discretionary disbursements and institutional buck-passing, while Zimbabwe continues to lose vast tracts of forest annually as farmers harvest woodlots to cure their tobacco.
What was sold as an environmental safeguard has become a case study in legal ambiguity and policy failure.
A levy without a home
The levy was introduced not through legislation, but a mere budget pronouncement, and the official intention was clear and unequivocal.
In November 2014, then minister of Finance. Patrick Chinamasa, told parliament that government would reintroduce a tobacco levy to fund reforestation.
“I propose to re-introduce the tobacco levy on tobacco growers at a rate of $0.015 of each dollar of the selling price, with effect from 1 January 2015,” Chinamasa said. “The revenue generated will be ring-fenced to finance reforestation activities.”
The urgency was clear.
Tobacco output had surged from 58.6 million kilogrammes in 2009 to 216 million kilogrammes in 2014, driven largely by the expansion of smallholder farming.
The foreign currency gains were accompanied by the aggressive clearing of indigenous woodlands for curing barns.
The levy, set at 1.5 percent of sales, was framed as a corrective “green tax”, with farmers now having to fund reforestation to offset environmental damage.
Industry stakeholders welcomed the proposal, particularly as international buyers increasingly demanded proof of sustainable tobacco production.
The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB), the statutory regulator of the sector, was tasked with collecting the levy.
Almost immediately, the levy ran into operational quicksand.
By the end of the 2015 marketing season, about US$7 million had been collected, and none could be spent.
Then TIMB chief executive, Dr Andrew Matibiri, publicly acknowledged the impasse.
“Between March and November (2015), TIMB has been trying to get the ministry of Finance and Economic Development for directions on how we can use the money,” Matibiri said at a national conference. “The fund is in the TIMB account, but we need guidelines on how the money can be used.”
The paralysis stemmed from a fatal omission.
The levy had never been established through an Act of Parliament or statutory instrument defining governance, disbursement mechanisms and accountability.
Announced as policy in a budget statement, it existed without legal personality.
TIMB chairperson up to 2019, Monica Chinamasa, warned that the absence of legal clarity would erode trust in the management of the levy.
“Farmers may think their money has been abused,” she said at a tobacco conference in November 2015. “It is wrong that farmers contribute towards a certain project and it does not kick off. Farmers want to see action.”
Legal experts consulted for this investigation say the levy’s design violated Section 298 of the constitution, which explicitly states that no taxes may be levied except under the authority of an Act of Parliament.
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Professor James Tsabora, a senior law academic at the University of Zimbabwe, said the implications were inevitable.
“The tobacco levy was created by policy, not by statute. From a constitutional standpoint, that placed it in a legal vacuum from day one. Without an enabling Act, ring-fencing is not enforceable.”
Constitutional law scholar, Professor Lovemore Madhuku, was even blunter.
“Where a levy is not created by its own Act, it lacks legal personality,” Madhuku said. “It cannot be ring-fenced. It becomes ordinary revenue, subject to treasury discretion and competing priorities. Parliament is effectively sidelined.”
This legal-policy paralysis, experts argue, explains why the levy could be collected compulsorily yet deployed selectively and opaquely, translating to a contradiction that stripped parliament of oversight and farmers of protection.
Murky collections
For two years, collections continued while funds remained frozen.
In 2017, then Agriculture minister, Joseph Made, announced that administration of the levy would shift from national treasury to TIMB after the former could not disburse US$13.2 million already collected.
TIMB promised an “aggressive afforestation programme” but the pledge proved hollow.
By 2018, nearly US$20 million had been collected and no communal woodlots had been established, and farmer anger surfaced publicly.
“As farmers, we are annoyed and disappointed and we don’t feel motivated to give that levy,” said Charles Chabikwa, then chairperson of the Federation of Farmers Union.
Zimbabwe Tobacco Association chief executive, Rodney Ambrose called for the levy’s removal, noting it added roughly 10 percent to farmers’ fuel costs without producing any benefit.
TIMB public relations manager at that time, Isheunesu Moyo, repeated that the funds were “ring-fenced” but said the board was awaiting “administrative processes and approval” from parliament”
That approval never materialised.
It was only in 2019, nearly five years after collections began, that funds were released.
The new Finance minister from 2017, Mthuli Ncube, conceded in his budget statement that the levy was not being used as intended and directed that 50 percent of proceeds be transferred to the Forestry Commission.
Treasury released ZWL$13 million, approximately US$855,395, to the commission in September 2019.
Its annual report confirms this was the first receipt from the levy.
That year, the commission produced 12.6 million seedlings against a target of 15 million and planted 5.6 million trees, citing drought as a key constraint.
In 2020, treasury increased the allocation to 100 percent.
By year-end, the Forestry Commission had received a cumulative ZWL$138 million, roughly US$1.69 million.
In the 2021 national budget, Ncube reiterated that the levy must address environmental degradation and called for inclusive stakeholder participation and investment in curing technologies.
Institutional vacuum
TIMB data shows the levy raised approximately US$45.8 million between 2015 and 2023.
Annual collections rose and fell with tobacco output, peaking in 2023 when record sales of nearly 300 million kilogrammes generated about US$6.73 million, our investigation established.
After 2022, the paper trail vanishes.
At a parliamentary hearing on 2 December 2025, Forestry Commission finance head, Walter Chirangande, told the joint portfolio committee on Environment, Climate and Wildlife that treasury had terminated the levy’s ring-fenced status.
“We were told again by the ministry of Finance that the tobacco levy is no longer a structured fund,” Chirangande said. “It is now going to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, so we are not getting anything directly from the tobacco levy.”
TIMB public affairs officer, Chelesani Tsarwe, confirmed that TIMB no longer administers the levy. “Once it is deducted, it is remitted to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority,” she said.
ZIMRA had not responded to questions seeking figures for the 2024 and 2025 seasons by the time of publication.
The consequences are visible on the ground.
Forestry Commission figures show Zimbabwe loses about 262,000 hectares of forest annually, with 15 to 20 percent—between 39,300 and 52,400 hectares—directly linked to tobacco curing.
After a decade of collections, documented woodlot establishment attributable to the levy stands at roughly 4,500 hectares.
Provincial forestry data uncovered during the investigation shows Manicaland’s forest cover fell from 45 percent to 37 percent between 2018 and 2024, with districts such as Makoni where Headlands lies identified as deforestation hotspots.
Field observation along a 60-kilometre stretch from the Mufusire highway into surrounding A2 farms revealed scattered eucalyptus plots dwarfed by extensive cleared land, confirming that replanting is negligible compared to removal.
The A2 farms are the plots that were allocated to thousands of smallholder farmers during the fast track land redistribution programme that started in 2000.
Farmers say government-backed afforestation tied to the levy is invisible.
“I have never come across a government-related programme to do with the Afforestation Levy,” Matenga said.
Contract companies provide limited coal and seedlings, she added, but “the wood is not enough.”
Simba Chiduke, contracted under Munakiri, said he received just two cubic metres of firewood per hectare, far below curing requirements.
Zimbabwe Tobacco Growers Association president, George Seremwe, described a total collapse of accountability.
“Millions of US dollars were and are still being collected,” he said. “Not even TIMB can tell us what happened to the money. The minister of Finance should be able to tell us.”
TIMB spokesperson, Chelesani Moyo, said the board is promoting climate-smart agriculture and noted that regulations require growers to establish 0.3 hectares of trees per hectare of tobacco.
This investigation found no evidence of systematic enforcement of that requirement in surveyed areas.
Environmental activist, Sydney Chisi, criticised the focus on exotic species. “Afforestation is not just replacing indigenous forests with eucalyptus,” he said. “We need fast-growing indigenous trees that restore ecosystems.”
The Environment, Climate and Wildlife parliamentary portfolio committee chairperson, Samson Matema, warned during a budget session against celebrating rising tobacco output without restoring forests.
“The moment you see our tobacco figures heading north, the message is, there is serious deforestation taking place, given the contradiction that I gave in regards to the tobacco levy not finding its way back to the farmers for the woodlots,” said Matema.
In the 2021 national budget, Mthuli Ncube reiterated the levy must address environmental damage, calling for ‘inclusive stakeholder participation’ and investment in improved curing technology.
But, for farmers like Serina Matenga, the abstraction ends at the auction floor. The “Afforestation Levy” will appear again on her next sales voucher, a charge rooted in policy, untethered from law, and paid for forests that never returned.
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