New Ziana

New Ziana is Zimbabwe’s state-owned national news agency and provincial/community newspaper publisher. It operates as a subsidiary of the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust, within the state-owned print-media ecosystem overseen by the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services. New Ziana publishes daily news output across local, national, business, political, agricultural, technology, sports, regional, and international affairs.

Media assets

News agency: New Ziana

Publishing: Chaminuka, Ilanga, Indonsakusa, Masvingo Star, Nehanda Guardian, Pungwe News, Telegraph, The Times

Ownership and governance

New Ziana traces its origins to the Zimbabwe Inter-Africa News Agency (ZIANA), established in 1981 as Zimbabwe’s official national news agency. ZIANA was placed within the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust structure at the same time as the controlling stake in Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited, with both entities established to consolidate state-controlled media holdings under a trust structure originally intended to provide an arm’s-length buffer between government and the country’s principal news organisations. The agency was subsequently renamed New Ziana.

New Ziana operates as a subsidiary of the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust (ZMMT), a state-created trust that the agency describes as overseeing state-owned print-media organisations. ZMMT was established by the Government of Zimbabwe in 1981 to oversee operations of media organisations in which the state held a significant shareholding. Ray Mungoshi serves as ZMMT Executive Secretary and has spoken on New Ziana’s governance and strategic direction across the 2023–2025 cycle.

In December 2024, ZMMT reported that plans were underway to appoint a New Ziana board, following an audit recommendation that New Ziana should operate independently of Trust management for corporate-governance reasons. This signalled a reorganisation of the agency’s governance structure aimed at separating New Ziana’s operational management from the Trust’s central administration. New Ziana is led by Chief Executive Officer Rangarirai Shoko, who represents the agency in international engagements and has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Russian news agency TASS at the Russia–Africa Media Forum covering information exchange, staff training, and reciprocal staff visits. Shoko has additionally served as a Zimbabwe-based panellist on international-relations and climate-policy forums.

In November 2023, ZMMT announced the appointment of Funny Mushava as Editor of Community Newspapers and Davison Maruziva as Deputy Editor of Community Newspapers, with both bringing more than four decades of journalistic experience including senior editorial roles at The Herald and The Sunday Mail. ZMMT also announced the appointment of Vongai Mukweva-Mudiwa as Human Resources and Administration Manager and Victor Manyembere as Property Officer. The community-newspaper revival was framed by ZMMT leadership as a strategy to restore the editorial reach of the eight community titles and to position New Ziana for the digital era.

Operational oversight of New Ziana sits with the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, headed since the February 2026 cabinet reshuffle by Zhemu Soda.

Source of funding and budget

New Ziana receives direct public funding through the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services vote, with minimal commercial revenue generated from advertising sales across its digital platforms and community publications. In the approved 2026 Estimates under Vote 20: Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, New Ziana appears under Programme 2, Sub-Programme 1 (P2SP1): Information and Publicity, with current-grant provision for compensation of employees and operations, and a separate capital-grant line for machinery and equipment. The 2026 approved estimates list ZWG 7.343 million for compensation of employees, ZWG 10.834 million for operations, and ZWG 11.978 million for machinery and equipment. These figures reflect a steady dependency on direct public financing, as the agency continues to operate in a challenging media market with limited commercial viability.

The 2026 National Budget, presented to Parliament by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube on 27 November 2025, is the annual fiscal plan for the year ending 31 December 2026 and marks the first annual budget under the National Development Strategy 2 (NDS2) spanning January 2026 to December 2030. The Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services programme objective under the 2026 Estimates is to disseminate information about Zimbabwe’s development, policies, programmes, and interests both locally and globally.

Editorial independence

Zimbabwe’s Constitution imposes impartiality and independence obligations on state-owned media, requiring all state-owned media to determine editorial content independently, be impartial, and afford fair opportunity for divergent and dissenting views. New Ziana, as the country’s state-owned national news agency, operates within the same constitutional framework that applies to the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and to the Zimpapers newspaper group.

New Ziana’s current homepage and category output show a heavy focus on government, presidential, ministerial, and public-policy news, which is consistent with its role within the state information system and with the Ministry of Information’s stated programme objective of disseminating information about Zimbabwe’s development, policies, programmes, and interests. The agency has not implemented any publicly documented internal editorial charter, code of journalistic ethics, or independent editorial-oversight mechanism. The audit-driven governance reorganisation announced by ZMMT in December 2024, including plans to appoint a separate New Ziana board to operate independently of Trust management, signals an institutional response to corporate-governance concerns, although the impact of this reorganisation on editorial autonomy will depend on the structure and operating mandate of the new board.

New Ziana’s international cooperation activities have included high-profile engagements with the Russian news agency TASS, with CEO Rangarirai Shoko publishing commentary in TASS coverage of Russian foreign-policy and Russia-Ukraine conflict narratives across 2024 and 2025. These partnerships indicate a state-to-state news-exchange orientation in New Ziana’s international architecture.

AI and digital policy

New Ziana operates a digital presence centred on the newziana.co.zw news portal, with daily output across local, national, business, political, agricultural, technology, sports, regional, and international news, and complementary distribution through social-media channels. No publicly available evidence of a formal New Ziana policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, or content provenance frameworks such as C2PA was identified in this review. At the national-policy level, the Cyber and Data Protection Act shapes the regulatory environment for digital content; the Broadcasting Services Amendment Act of 2025 addresses broadcasting regulation and is more directly relevant to ZBC than to New Ziana’s news-agency work.

May 2026