The Sunday Mail
The journey of 1 000 miles begins with a single step, so says Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu.
It is an adage that aptly relates to how Zimbabwe is trying to combat rural poverty, which is a major problem in many countries around the world.
The 2014 Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) Rural Livelihoods Assessment Report tells us that the average income of our rural population has improved by 20 percent since 2013.
This, obviously, is wonderful news and lends credence to the efficacy of Government policies such as land reform.
But much more needs to be done.
ZimVAC says rural food security and incomes are improving, and that the proportion of households living on a poor diet dropped from 11 to 6 percent in the year under review.
However, poverty levels are still disturbing.
According to the report, poverty is still more widespread in rural households (76 percent) compared to the 38 percent in urban areas.
“The prevalence of poverty in Zimbabwe was at 63 percent with 16 percent to be in extreme poverty,” reads part of the report. “A total of 30 percent of the rural people are extremely poor compared to 6 percent in urban areas.”
With the 2012 national population census figures showing that 67 percent of people in Zimbabwe live in rural areas, this should spur Government to intensify the fight against poverty.
Experts say the private sector and donors can do much more than they are presently doing to ameliorate the situation.
For instance, the improvement in rural livelihoods is to a significant extent attributable to the Presidential Well-Wishers Agricultural Inputs Scheme.
As such, more support from the corporate world can result in even better agricultural yields, as well as gains in sanitation, job creation and education and health facilities prevalence.
“There are a number of notable improvements this year, particularly in terms of income and food security,” says Rural and Urban development expert Miriro Nyatanga. “But on the flip side there is still room for improvement. We need to eradicate poverty in the rural areas because by doing so we will be eradicating national poverty since the majority of Zimbabweans live in rural areas.
“To do that, the corporate world and donors should come in and take an active role in developmental projects since our Government, which has been doing its part to the best of its abilities, is faced with other challenges.”
Nyatanga says job creation, through small and medium-size enterprise development, is a key factor in fighting rural poverty.
“Economic challenges have resulted in the decrease in consumer spending habits. This results in production declining since there will be reduced demand,” she said.
ZimVAC revealed that the average household income for April 2014 was US$111, an increase from last year’s average of US$95.
Although there was improvement, the income is, however, almost five times lower than the national poverty datum line which has been hovering around the US$500 mark since the beginning of the year.
Some of the points which also epitomise rural poverty in the report is the increase in the number of children who are out of school, up from 17 to 21 percent of the households that had at least one child of school-going age.
“Financial constraints continue to be the most common reason why children are not able to attend school.”
Of the households that had at least one child of school-going age out of school, 48 percent of the households could not afford to pay school fees.
This shows the country still has a long way to go to meet the Millennium Development Goal to “ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling”.
Another indicator of poverty is that around 60 percent of rural households do not own any cattle.
“Nationally, only 14 percent of the households owned more than five cattle with Matabeleland South and Matabeleland North having a higher proportion of households owning more than five cattle.”
In African rural societies, owning cattle is a sign of wealth. They can be sold or bartered, and provide milk, meat and draught power.
Small steps in the right direction are being made, though.
“Nationally, average household cereal (maize and small grains) production was 529,5kg. This was higher than last season (346kg).”
The report also predicts that the 2014-2015 farming season will yield even greater harvests thereby further improving rural livelihoods.
In an analysis of the report, Ian Scoones, a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Developmental Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK, says there is a possibility that food security in rural areas is even higher since ZimVAC places resettlement areas in the same bracket as communal lands.
He says food production in resettled areas is higher than in communal lands, a fact he says ZimVAC failed to capture.
“Annoyingly, the report (ZimVAC) still doesn’t separate communal areas and resettlement areas, and my guess is that there remains some sampling bias,” he said.
“Last year, fortunately the dire predictions (hunger) were not borne out.
“In part, this was because the rains came, and a green crop filled the hunger period, but also I hypothesised in an earlier blog that the production from new resettlement areas was being under-counted.
“I suspect this remains the case.”
