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Yeukai Karengezeka Herald Correspondent
Harare City Council is considering engaging a South African firm, Skystar, in a bid to enhance revenue collection and service delivery initiatives. Town clerk Engineer Hosiah Chisango has since begun talks with Skystar.

Recent minutes of the Finance and Development Committee revealed that council has already dispatched top officials to South Africa to explore the efficacy of the deal.

“Town clerk reported that Skystar had approached City of Harare with the view to entering into a partnership for the establishment of Connected Citizen platform for the enhancement of revenue collection and service delivery initiatives,” reads the minutes.

“He also reported that on April 9, 2019, acting finance director, information and technology manager and the acting business developer manager had visited Skystar in South Africa for an in-depth discussion on the proposal.”

Skystar was proposing a long-term agreement with City of Harare under which the South Africa-based firm would provide, manage and maintain the citizen platform, initially at no cost. This was on the assumption that the project would subsequently be self-financing.

In the medium to long-term, the platform would enable the city to double or treble revenue collection as well as introduce new revenue streams.

The deal would make the local authority a licensor of the project.
“The committee was also informed that the project was expected to afford the city a unique opportunity to become a licensor and operator of this platform at community level, leveraging on vast database of ratepayers who would be the initial users and the city would ultimately connect other local authorities and the broad citizenry,” read the minutes.

The committee appreciated the proposal and requested Eng Chisango to invite Skystar to make a presentation to get full appreciation of the deal.