Liquid Intelligent Technologies Zimbabwe, another company owned by Zimbabwe’s richest business mogul, Strive Masiyiwa, has launched a 30-day artificial intelligence challenge aimed at helping local businesses bring AI into everyday work, as the country moves to turn its new national technology ambitions into practical tools for companies.
The programme will select 25 organisations to receive access to Microsoft Copilot. Liquid says the challenge is designed to show businesses how AI can be used in routine tasks, including preparing meeting summaries, drafting proposals, managing emails and analysing data.
The initiative gives participating companies a limited but direct route into a technology that is often discussed in broad terms. Instead of asking businesses to redesign their operations at once, the challenge is centred on common office tasks that consume time in small and growing firms. Organisations interested in taking part have been asked to contact Liquid through zimbabwecommercial@liquid.tech.
The launch comes as Zimbabwe builds a formal policy framework around artificial intelligence. In March, the country introduced its National Artificial Intelligence Strategy for 2026 to 2030, placing AI talent, infrastructure, sector adoption, research, governance and international collaboration at the centre of its digital plans. Agriculture, mining, healthcare, education, finance, manufacturing, transport, energy and public services have all been identified as areas where AI could be applied.
For businesses, however, the immediate challenge is less about national policy than access to reliable tools, skills and connectivity. Liquid’s programme is intended to place AI in the hands of companies that may not have the money or technical staff to begin a large-scale transformation on their own.
The company has linked the challenge to its wider digital transformation offering, which combines connectivity, cloud services and cyber security. Its stated aim is to encourage early adoption of AI and help businesses improve productivity before the technology becomes an essential part of competition across the economy.
The programme also follows Liquid’s launch of SME Bundles in Zimbabwe in August. The packages are available in Basic and Standard versions and combine fibre connectivity, Microsoft 365 applications, cloud backup and Liquid POS, a cloud-based fiscalisation platform. The service is designed to issue and report invoices as transactions take place, update stock records in real time and maintain financial information without repeated manual reconciliation.
The bundles are offered on a monthly subscription, allowing businesses to use enterprise-grade tools without the large upfront cost traditionally associated with such systems. Companies can move between the Basic and Standard packages as their requirements change and add services without managing several separate supplier contracts.
Liquid says bringing these services together is meant to reduce the number of systems and suppliers that small businesses must manage. The company has also presented the model as a way of making compliance part of ordinary trading rather than a separate administrative task.
“SMEs account for more than 60% of Zimbabwe’s GDP, over 70% of national employment and have an enormous potential to drive innovation and economic growth. Yet many business owners still face the challenge of balancing this growth with increasingly complex operational and compliance requirements. Our SME Bundles make it easier to stay compliant, improve productivity and focus on serving customers and growing their business. By removing technology complexity, we’re helping Zimbabwean SMEs focus on providing better services to their customers, become more resilient, competitive and ready for long-term growth,” said Lorreta Songola, Vice President and Chief Executive Officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies Zimbabwe.
Small and medium-sized enterprises form a large part of Zimbabwe’s economic activity, but many continue to operate under difficult conditions. Internet access remains expensive for many users, while infrastructure limitations and frequent electricity shortages affect the ability of companies to stay online and use cloud-based applications consistently. The arrival of Starlink in Zimbabwe in September 2024 introduced another option for some customers and placed pressure on established internet providers to reduce prices, but affordability and access remain uneven.
Those pressures make reliability a central issue for any AI or cloud programme. AI applications depend on a working connection, stable electricity and the ability to store and move data safely. A company may have access to Microsoft Copilot or a cloud accounting platform, but the value of those services falls sharply when staff cannot connect to them or when systems are not backed up.
A major regional outage in May 2024 demonstrated how quickly such problems can spread. Two submarine cables, SEACOM and EASSy, were damaged off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa on 12 May, reducing internet connectivity across several East African countries. The cables were repaired by 3 June, roughly three weeks after the damage occurred. During the disruption, users in Uganda reported difficulty accessing social media and online learning services, while Tanzania experienced severely degraded service for several hours.
The incident reinforced the importance of building more resilient digital systems. Businesses increasingly rely on online payments, hosted software, remote support, digital records and customer-facing websites. When a connection fails, the effect can reach far beyond an office’s internet access. Orders may stop, payments can be interrupted and staff may lose access to data needed to serve customers.
Liquid has been promoting a multi-cloud approach as one response to that risk. The company’s cloud services division says organisations should decide where each workload should run according to its performance, security, compliance, latency and cost requirements. Customer-facing applications may operate in a public cloud, regulated information may remain in a sovereign environment, legacy systems may continue on company premises, and time-sensitive workloads may be processed closer to users or industrial sites.
For Zimbabwean businesses, particularly those operating in sectors such as mining, retail, financial services and logistics, this approach is intended to reduce dependence on a single platform. Liquid’s Aggregated Cloud Experience is designed to bring different cloud environments under one management layer, with a unified view of security, costs and operations. Its Secure360 service is positioned alongside that platform to provide cyber security controls and oversight across the wider environment.
The growing use of AI also increases the need for businesses to manage data carefully. Zimbabwe’s national AI strategy calls for investment in digital infrastructure and cloud computing, the use of secure data systems and the development of local capacity to support AI research and applications. It also places emphasis on talent development, including STEM education, coding and data literacy.
The government has set out plans for AI Centres of Excellence, research support and sector-based projects. Proposed applications include crop and climate analysis, disease prediction, safer mining, more efficient energy and water use, improved public services and data systems that can identify irregularities.
The private sector will be expected to turn those broad objectives into working services. Liquid’s 30-day challenge is one of the clearest early attempts to move that process into ordinary businesses, where the first gains may come from faster paperwork, better information management and less time spent on repetitive work.
The company has not presented the challenge as a replacement for wider investment in skills, power and connectivity. Instead, it is offering a practical starting point for organisations that want to test AI through familiar business tasks. The 25 participating companies will provide a small but visible measure of how quickly Zimbabwean firms can move from interest in AI to regular use.
As the challenge gets under way, the country’s digital transformation will be judged not only by the strength of its national strategy or the availability of new software. It will also depend on whether small businesses can afford reliable connections, protect their information, train their employees and keep operating when the networks and systems on which they depend are disrupted.