Zimbabwe

Sakina Chikwanda is no longer pleading her neighbours to share their food. She is receiving monthly food rations and can cook daily meals for her family. (Photo:WFP/Victoria Cavanagh)

Motherly Love Not Enough To Keep Hunger At Bay in Zimbabwe

Mothers and grandmothers around the world tend to want to feed their families. For Sakina Chikwanda in Zimbabwe, this seemed an impossibility following drought in parts of the country. The World Food Programme (WFP) has partnered with the Government of Zimbabwe to ensure those most vulnerable have enough to eat until the next harvest.

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Overview

Food production in Zimbabwe has been devastated by a combination of economic and political instability, and natural disasters. Recurrent droughts, a series of poor harvests, high unemployment (estimated at more than 60%), restructuring of the agriculture sector and a high HIV/AIDS prevalence rate – at 13.7 per cent, the fifth highest in the world - have all contributed to increasing levels of vulnerability and acute food insecurity since 2001. This situation has necessitated large-scale humanitarian food assistance operations in the country.