In Default for 25 Years, Zimbabwe Struggles to Feed Its Citizens
Over the last quarter century, Zimbabwe has failed to pay $21 billion in debt.
Now, as the country struggles with the impact of a once-in-a-generation drought, ordinary Zimbabweans are paying the price. A prolonged hot and dry spell caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon has ravaged southern Africa, withering crops and leaving 26 million people across seven nations hungry, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme.
Zimbabwe has been hardest hit, with the corn crop falling by more than two-thirds from previous years. The WFP anticipates that about 7.6 million people will need help accessing food between now and May.
“We couldn’t harvest anything from our field. Even the melons failed to grow,” Bekezela Dube, a 32-year-old mother of four, told United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Climate, Reena Ghelani, on a visit to the remote rural area of Maphisa. After more than two decades of economic turmoil, many Zimbabweans can’t afford imported food. And fatigue has set in among humanitarian donors.
That leaves multilateral lenders and development finance institutions as the country’s best hope for feeding roughly half its population. Yet unlike other countries — including neighboring Zambia, which has already received $1 billion from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to replenish its food supplies and hydropower-dependent energy system — Zimbabwe is locked out of adding to its debt.
Zimbabwe’s creditors include the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Paris Club, all of which have declined to provide emergency funds. The IMF said it is bound by rules that preclude it from making loans to a country already in default to related organizations.
