With the drought during the 2001-02 agricultural season, food security has become a serious concern for rural areas of Zimbabwe. However the focus on drought, with less emphasis on the impacts of land reform and macroeconomic problems, risks ignoring the plight of other communities not dependent on their own food production such as commercial farm workers and informal mining communities.
The specific objectives of the current assessment were to:
- Assess and describe households' current ability to access food, non-food items and services in the four selected food economy zones, and predict how this may change in the period until the April 2003 harvest
- Estimate emergency food aid needs by socio-economic group and time period
- Highlight potential non-food emergency needs, and longer-term livelihood support strategies
Methodology
SC UK's Household Economy Approach (HEA) methodology was used for this assessment. HEA is a framework for analysing household food security and a population's needs. Information is collected on the various options and strategies that households in different wealth groups employ to secure access to food and cash income, and on their patterns of expenditure and how they cope when shocks occur. Implicit in this approach is a clear focus on people's traditional livelihoods in order to build a picture of how the economy in a particular area works, utilising the knowledge of local people in a structured and systematic way.
The fieldwork for this assessment was carried out between July 19th and August 6th 2002, and was led by two experienced HEA practitioners (an independent consultant and a SC staff member). Further assistance was provided by two additional trained HEA practitioners from SC UK and from the UNDP's Relief & Recovery Unit (RRU), and by staff from the Department of Social Welfare, AREX and Zvimba Rural District Council. The teams began by reviewing secondary data, and by meeting with local authorities and key informants in Zvimba, Seke, Goromonzi and Marondera districts. For two of the zones (commercial farm workers and informal mines), baseline HEA information was available through research carried out under SC's Emergency Preparedness programme in 2001. For the Mashonaland Prime Communal zone, older and more limited information was available from the 1996 Zimbabwe RiskMap report. The Mashonaland Resettlement Zone is a new zone created as a result of the Fast Track land reform programme which began in June 2000, and it has not been previously assessed.
Each of these zones spans a number of districts and provinces. For this assessment, sample sites were selected mainly from Zvimba district in Mashonaland West, and from Goromonzi, Marondera and Seke districts in Mashonaland East. One site was covered in Guruve district in Mashonaland Central.
The assessment in each area began with interviews with community leaders to get an overview of the situation, and to identify the different socio-economic or wealth groups in that community. Focus group interviews were then held with a sample of households from each group. These groups were usually gender disaggregated. Interviews were based around a semi-structured format, and focused on typical households' sources of food and income, on the division of labour within households, including roles played by children and women in sourcing food and cash income, and on coping strategies available to the community.
The current assessment quantified food, income and expenditure during the period between April and June/ July 2002. Additional discussions covered seasonal access to food and income, and looked in brief at patterns of access in previous years and at predicted trends between now and April 2003.
Research constraints
There were no significant constraints to the fieldwork in Zvimba district. In parts of Mashonaland East, tensions between newly resettled farmers and former commercial farmworkers on two farms meant that it was only possible to interview one or other of the groups. However, this was not felt to have compromised the overall results.
|
Related documents