Zimbabwe
Agricultural infrastructure improvements and increased community capacity to manage shocks may help address vulnerability to droughts and macroeconomic shocks in rural Zimbabwe.
Overview
Zimbabwe is vulnerable to droughts, the effects of which in recent years have been exacerbated by macroeconomic issues. The Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund, a major new partnership between the national government and several international organizations, aims to build resilience to shocks and stresses and protect development gains by increasing community capacity, applying evidence to policy making, and increasing the effectiveness of disaster response.
Risk Environment
Zimbabwe has experienced severe El Nino-induced droughts in recent years that have resulted in successive crop failures. The country’s significant macroeconomic issues have deepened the impact, as remittances fell as a result of the devaluation of the South African rand, and a nationwide cash shortage meant that workers weren’t being paid and the Grain Management Board was late in paying farmers. Formal financial institutions dramatically cut back on providing credit to farmers and livestock owners, making it more difficult to cope with the effects of the drought and mitigate against future shocks.
Resilience Approach
The Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund, a partnership between the Government of Zimbabwe and several international development organizations, aims to build resilience to shocks and stresses and protect development gains by focusing on three key areas:
- applying evidence to policy making
- improving absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities of communities
- timely and cost effective responses to emergencies
The Fund also supports national surveys that inform resilience programming. Improving agricultural infrastructure, especially related to drought, and improving communities’ ability to manage disaster through empowerment and training are priorities for strengthening resilience in Zimbabwe.
More About Zimbabwe
A New Approach to Labor Market Assessments
26 Apr 2023 - USAID , Implementer-Led Design, Evidence, Analysis and Learning (IDEAL)
Examine how Systems Labor Market Assessments identified on- and off-farm opportunities for rural households in Zimbabwe and Haiti.
Zimbabwe Resilience Factsheet
17 Jun 2022 - USAID
Zimbabwe’s development progress depends on the productivity of its natural resources, principally land, water and wildlife. Yet Zimbabwe’s food, forests and wildlife are in steep decline.
Climate risk profile: Zimbabwe
12 Feb 2021 - ATLAS - Adaptation Thought Leadership and Assessments
This profile provides an overview of climate risks in Zimbabwe, including how climate variability and change is likely to impact five key sectors in the country: agriculture, livestock, human health, water resources...
Zimbabwe Resilience Research Report
27 Aug 2019 - Organizational Authors: TANGO International, USAID Center for Resilience , USAID/Harare, Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) under the Resilience Evaluation, Analysis and Learning Award , Authors: Martin, S., Mueller, M., Nelson, S., Mupeyi
This study adapted a USAID/TANGO resilience analysis framework to use with secondary datasets. The goals were to describe the relationships between resilience capacity and well-being outcomes in the face of a drought...