In the age of AI, companies that own their software, data, and digital capabilities will increasingly outperform those that merely rent technology from others.
FOR decades, the rule of thumb in business technology was simple: if you can buy it, don't build it. Why hire engineers to write payroll software when a vendor will sell you a licence? Why build a customer database when an off-the-shelf system already does the job? This thinking, known in strategy circles as the “make-or-buy” decision, shaped how companies everywhere, including here in Zimbabwe, approached technology for a generation.
But something is shifting. Around the world, some of the most successful companies are quietly reversing that logic. They are asking a different question. Instead of “What software can we buy?” they are asking, “What capabilities should we own?” And the answer, increasingly, is: more than you'd think.
Consider Starbucks. The global coffee chain spends roughly $400 million every year on software bought from established technology vendors. This month, news broke that Starbucks is walking away from key Microsoft and IBM systems that includes the platforms that track its inventory and manage equipment maintenance across thousands of stores to build its own AI-assisted replacements in-house. The move is part of a broader $2 billion cost-cutting drive, but it is about far more than saving money. Starbucks' own chief technology officer has said the company sees “clear opportunities” to reduce software spending by building rather than buying. Markets noticed immediately: shares in IBM, Salesforce, and other enterprise software vendors dipped on the news, because investors understood what was really being signaled, that one of the world's most recognisable retail brands no longer believes it must rent its core operating systems from someone else. What made this possible now, rather than a decade ago, is that AI-assisted coding tools have sharply lowered the cost and time it takes to build serious enterprise software in-house, changing the arithmetic of the make-or-buy decision for large companies everywhere.
The old logic, in plain language
The make-or-buy decision is really about one thing: control versus convenience. Buying software, that is, a subscription, a licence, an outsourced app is fast and requires little in-house skill. You pay a fee, someone else maintains it, and you focus on your “core business.” Building your own software is slower and costs more upfront, but you end up owning something no competitor can copy exactly, tailored precisely to how you work.
For years, buying won that trade-off. Software vendors got very good at selling “efficiency,” and outsourcing development to cheaper markets became standard practice. It felt sensible: why reinvent the wheel?
The problem is that off-the-shelf software, by definition, is built for everyone and no one in particular. It solves generic problems in a generic way. Your competitors are often using the exact same system, which means it cannot be a source of advantage. At best it keeps you level with the pack, never ahead of it.
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Meanwhile, the businesses now leading their industries globally, that is, the large banks, the logistics giants, the biggest retailers have learned that their data, their algorithms, and their custom platforms are among their most valuable assets. A system built around your specific customers, your specific supply chain, your specific risk models becomes something a rival simply cannot buy from the same vendor you did. It is proprietary. It compounds. Every year of use makes it smarter and harder to replicate.
This is why the world's most valuable technology firms rarely outsource their core platforms. They buy specialised tools for non-critical tasks, but the systems that actually run their business (the recommendation engines, the fraud detection models, the logistics algorithms) are built and guarded in-house. Ownership, not procurement, has become the strategic asset. Starbucks' pivot away from Microsoft and IBM is simply the latest and most visible proof point of a pattern already well-established among technology leaders.
The hidden costs of buying everything
There is also a less-discussed downside to leaning too heavily on outsourced software: dependency. Vendor lock-in is real. Once a company's operations are wired into a particular platform, switching becomes expensive and disruptive, which gives vendors enormous pricing power. Subscription fees creep upward year after year, often with little corresponding improvement in the product. Customisation is limited to whatever the vendor allows, so the business bends its processes to fit the software, rather than the other way round.
There are quieter risks too. When core systems and their data sit with an external provider, sensitive information such as customer records, financial data, and trade secrets passes through someone else's infrastructure, raising legitimate cybersecurity and sovereignty concerns. And when institutional knowledge about how your systems work lives entirely with an outside contractor, the company loses the ability to adapt quickly when circumstances change — a serious weakness in fast-moving markets.
What this means for Zimbabwe
This global rethink matters enormously for Zimbabwe. Many local companies such as banks, retailers, mines, manufacturers, and government departments still rely heavily on imported enterprise software and foreign consultants for core digital systems. Licence fees are paid in foreign currency, support depends on vendors thousands of kilometres away, and systems are rarely designed with Zimbabwe's specific operating realities in mind: intermittent connectivity, multi-currency transactions, informal-sector dynamics, and a business environment quite unlike the markets these platforms were originally built for.
The honest question Zimbabwean boards and executives should be asking is this: are we investing enough in our own software engineering talent, or are we simply renting someone else's? Every year spent as a pure consumer of foreign digital tools is a year of missed opportunity to build local expertise, retain foreign currency, and develop systems that actually fit how business is done here.
The lesson from Starbucks is instructive precisely because it is not a small tech start-up making the move, but a mature, cash-generating global brand with decades of comfortable vendor relationships. If a company of that scale has concluded that owning its inventory and maintenance systems is worth the disruption of unwinding long-standing contracts, Zimbabwean companies, many of them far smaller and with far less bargaining power over foreign vendors should be asking themselves an even sharper version of the same question.
The opportunity in front of us
The encouraging news is that the barriers to building good software have never been lower. Cloud computing means a Zimbabwean company no longer needs to own expensive servers to run sophisticated systems. Artificial intelligence tools and modern development frameworks mean smaller teams can now build what once required large, costly engineering departments. Automation and data analytics platforms that were once the preserve of multinational corporations are now within reach of ambitious local firms and start-ups.
This creates a genuine opening for Zimbabwe's universities, technology hubs, and independent software developers to become partners in building a locally owned digital ecosystem — not merely consumers of whatever is imported. Local developers understand local problems. A Zimbabwean fintech engineer understands mobile money and cash-liquidity dynamics in a way a foreign vendor's generic banking software never will. A local agri-tech team understands smallholder logistics and seasonal financing needs better than an imported enterprise resource planning system configured for a different continent.
Every sector stands to gain from this shift. Banks could build fraud and credit-risk systems trained on local transaction patterns rather than borrowed foreign models. Agricultural businesses could develop platforms tuned to local weather, soil, and market conditions. Mining and manufacturing firms could build predictive maintenance and supply-chain tools suited to local infrastructure realities. Retailers could design systems around the informal and formal trade patterns unique to Zimbabwean commerce. Healthcare and education institutions could build systems that reflect local patient and student records requirements rather than paying recurring fees for foreign platforms poorly suited to local conditions. Logistics firms and government service departments could likewise benefit from systems designed with Zimbabwe's roads, connectivity, and administrative realities in mind, rather than imported templates.
None of this requires abandoning outsourcing altogether. It remains entirely sensible to buy standard, non-differentiating tools such as accounting software, email systems, basic office applications where there is no competitive advantage to be gained from building your own. The strategic shift is not “build everything,” but “know the difference between what is core and what is generic,” and invest accordingly.
A challenge to Zimbabwean leaders
This is a call to Zimbabwean business leaders, boards of directors, policymakers, and investors to rethink an assumption that has gone largely unexamined for too long. Building software should not be treated merely as an IT department's expense line. It is a strategic investment — one that strengthens organisational resilience, drives innovation, creates high-value local jobs, and reduces the country's dependence on foreign technology providers and the foreign currency outflows that come with them.
In the digital economy now taking shape, the companies and countries that own their technology will increasingly own their future. Those that merely rent it will remain, at best, one step behind. Zimbabwe has the talent and the growing technological means to choose ownership. The only question is whether its business leaders will choose to build it.
Alexander Maune (Ph.D) is an IoDZ member as well as a Talmudic and Zoharic scholar, researcher, and consultant. Mail to:alexandermaune6@gmail.com.
