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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Senior Health Reporter
The Zimbabwe Livelihood Assessment Committee (ZimLAC) this week commenced the 2024 Rural Livelihoods Assessment to ascertain the extent to which the El Nino induced drought has affected rural communities and their livelihoods.
President Mnangagwa last month declared the drought a national disaster following indications that the majority of the 2023/2024 crop had become a write off.
The rural livelihoods assessment carried out in 2023 had shown that 2,7 million Zimbabweans were likely to be food insecure by March 2024.
However, due to the prolonged dry spell, the Government extended the lean season to June 2024 and put in place various strategies while awaiting the undertaking of the 2024 rural assessment. The Zimbabwe Livelihood Assessment Committee (ZimLAC) is a consortium of Government, UN agencies, NGOs and international organisations which is chaired by the Food and Nutrition Council (FNC). Since its inception in 2001, ZimLAC has conducted 11 urban and 23 rural livelihoods assessments (this being the 24th). The 10th 2024 Urban Livelihoods Assessment was carried out in February.
In an interview, FNC director general Dr George Kembo said the assessment would provide an update on livelihoods in Zimbabwe’s rural areas and inform policy formulation and programming of appropriate interventions.
“Informed by the declaration, the 2024 Rural Zimbabwe’s aim is also to go and (find) the impact and significance of the drought.
“The assessment is anchored and influenced by the reality that we have faced as a country.
So we want to understand to what extent the drought has affected people in terms of cereal availability and production, but also to what extent the Nino-induced drought negated the efforts that have been being made, and affected the people’s resilience and adaptive capacity,” Dr Kembo said.
While waiting for latest information and evidence from the 2024 Rural Livelihoods Assessment, Government has already put in motion food distribution to all vulnerable households across the country and has also implemented various mitigation strategies that include supplementary grain importation, drilling more boreholes under the Presidential Input Scheme. Government has also launched a massive winter crop production programme aimed at increasing production to enhance food security.
Dr Kembo said besides assessing the impact of the drought, the 2024 rural assessment would also assess the resilience of households to inform the development of different strategies to respond to the weather phenomenon.
He said data from the annual livelihood assessments was critical for informing the development of holistic food and nutrition programmes to ensure that no one and no place were left behind.
“We want to understand the impact that exists within the livelihood strategy of different households, so that the available resources can be channelled to the most in need at a given time and at an identified geographical area. So the assessment is going to be one of the complementary evidence that is going to inform Government in its decision making and coming up with a response strategy, not only in terms of food aid or food support, but also in terms of livelihood option, livestock support, and also in terms of how to sustain an economic environment in the rural areas, functional markets, access to other areas, and also anticipating the future of the farmer so that they can go back to the fields,” he said.
Dr Kembo said to ensure consultative and inclusive approach, the survey was using a sampling approach which will target 18 000 households countrywide with 300 households drawn from each of the 60 rural districts. It will also include 10 community level focus group discussions per district as well as the engagement of chiefs in all target areas.
“Primary data is going to be collected in a four-pronged approach. We will collect data from the local government, and collect data from 18,000 households throughout the country represented by the statistical evidence and the sampling approach to ensure that there is a 95 percent confidence level and a 5 percent margin of error. We have focus group discussions to understand the generic situation within a defined area, for example markets and other related functionals. We also value the importance of local leadership, the chiefs and headmen and we also have a set of information that we collect from the leadership, in terms of understanding the situation, the strategies the Government can implement, which is complementary data that is critical to informed decision-making. We triangulate our data together with the secondary data to ensure that we strengthen and enhance the analysis and ensure that we produce evidence that will inform decision-making,” he said.
The final report is expected to be complete by the end of June when it will go through the consultative process before being presented to Cabinet for approval.
Online Reporter