Integrating Indigenous Financial Frameworks in Zimbabwean Banks: A Decolonial Economics’ Approach to Sustainable Finance

This study explores, from decolonial economics perspective, how nineteen Zimbabwean banks engage with both Euro-American and indigenous knowledge systems in their sustainable finance practices. Despite growing global interest in sustainability, limited research has examined the relevance of these models within Zimbabwe’s socio-economic context. Addressing this gap, the study employs transformative sequential mixed methods, incorporating 289 structured questionnaires, 30 focus group discussions, and 45 archival documents. Data were subjected to descriptive statistics, narrative analysis, Marxist immanent critique, and decolonial theory. Findings reveal that Zimbabwean banks predominantly adopt Euro-American sustainability frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Accords and accounting standards. However, these frameworks often misalign with local realities, obscuring sustainability colonialism, promoting exclusion of indigenous knowledge, reinforcing Global North dominance, and perpetuating weak sustainability theory. This results in superficial compliance that conceals extractive investments and carbon-intensive practices. Moreover, these models deepen subordinated financialization, commodification, elite capture, resource expropriation, and socio-environmental inequalities. The study calls for a paradigm shift, either rejecting Euro-American models in favor of indigenous approaches or adopting a hybrid model that integrates indigenous knowledge. Such a shift would promote strong sustainability, pluralism, and decolonized institutional frameworks to foster financial inclusion, community resilience, and ecological regeneration in Zimbabwe.