Oxfam's work in Zimbabwe in depth

In Zimbabwe, Oxfam's focus is on sustainable livelihoods, health, and helping poor people to have enough food in times of need.

The context

Zimbabwe is gradually emerging from a severe political and humanitarian crisis characterised by a decade-old economic collapse. The crisis reached its peak in 2008 when unprecedented hyperinflation, poor agricultural production, and massive degradation of basic social services resulted in about seven million people needing emergency food assistance. The inter-party violence that followed the first round of elections in March 2008 led to internal displacements and, to worsen the situation, from August of that year the country experienced a debilitating cholera epidemic that resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 people.

In February 2009, the main political parties in Zimbabwe, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations, signed a Global Political Agreement to form an inclusive Government of National Unity.  The political environment has since improved and there has been an opening up of operating space for civil society, enabling access to vulnerable communities.

In 2009, the use of multiple currencies was introduced, mainly the US dollar and South African rand. Inflation levels started to drop, eventually reaching 0.4% in August 2009 from a six-digit percentage point. Significant improvement was observed in the availability of food and other basic consumables, and the number of food insecure people dropped from seven million in 2008 to between three and four million in 2009. In 2010, the modest economic growth and stabilisation continued.

The agricultural sector, which is the backbone of Zimbabwe’s economy, has shown remarkable improvement in the last two years, but industrial productivity remains poor. Most industries are operating below production capacity because of power shortages and the lack of essential imported inputs.  Civil servants are underpaid and the quality of services in the health and education sectors remains low. Water and sanitation facilities are dilapidated and there is an acute shortage of chemicals to treat major water supply points.

Zimbabwe’s crisis largely stemmed from economic decline and political challenges. While there has been improvements and relative stability in the country, the fragility of the situation at a political level remains evident, particularly as the country is undergoing the constitution-making process and moves closer to anticipated elections.

How Oxfam is helping

In Zimbabwe, Oxfam’s work is guided by a five-year strategy, which runs until 2014. It focuses on five key areas:

• Economic Justice (including the Urban Livelihoods under Joint Initiative Programme)
• Essential Services
• Gender Justice
• Rights in Crisis
• Policy and Advocacy

Local partnerships are central to all areas of our work and include alliance building, as well as strategy planning and hands on implementation. The objective is to achieve lasting change by linking all the areas with advocacy and policy work. Other crosscutting work includes accountability, gender equality and diversity, making sure we monitor, evaluate and learn from everything we do.

Economic Justice

The Economic Justice programme targets three key areas: agriculture market systems development, adaptation to climate change, and learning on urban livelihoods.

The agriculture market systems development programme focuses on increasing agriculture production and productivity, linking farmers to produce markets, setting up information centres within communities for information about market prices, and building the capacity of producer groups and partner organisations to implement, advocate and influence decisions and policies that affect their lives and livelihoods.

Under climate change adaptation, the focus is on policy and programme interventions in three critical areas:

• Diversification of livelihoods and farming systems
• Disaster risk reduction
• Natural resource management.

For urban areas, the economic justice programme is building on past experience in mobilising vulnerable urban households to support the establishment of small to medium enterprises as well as promoting urban agriculture.

The programme is currently working with eight strategic partners to implement projects across nine districts. Programme partners include Batanai, the Lower Guruve Development Association, SPWSNET, the Midlands Caring Organisation, and IDE.

Rights in Crisis

The Rights in Crisis programme has two objectives:

• To reduce the vulnerability of at-risk urban, peri-urban and rural populations to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) related disease transmission, by increasing access to water and sanitation infrastructure and public health promotion activities, and enhancing the capacities of key WASH institutions
• To reduce the risk of future food crises in Zimbabwe through building response capacity and reducing vulnerability.

Our strategy is to work in partnership wherever possible but maintain flexibility for direct implementation should the situation demand it. Currently, this programme covers 13 districts and works with six partners.

The key donors are OFDA, AusAid, DBSA, UNICEF, ECHO, WFP, AuronAid and DFID. The programme maintains contingency stocks as part of its emergency preparedness strategy.

Essential Services

The overall aim of the essential services programme is to enable vulnerable people to have access to affordable and quality essential services.

The work revolves around three key objectives:

• Improved access to HIV prevention, quality care and treatment services
• Improved access to affordable quality health services. This includes advocacy work on pertinent health issues, and institutional capacity building and advocacy on long-term water and sanitation issues
• Increased access to quality basic education.

Current work includes:

• Mainstreaming HIV and AIDS in economic justice and humanitarian programmes
• Livelihoods programme for people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS in the Chirumanzu district
• Supporting the Fair Play for Africa campaign in Zimbabwe
• Working with partners in lobbying the National AIDS Council on improved access to quality HIV services
• Research on the linkages between HIV and AIDS and water-related diseases.

Essential services partners include:

• Health: Community Working Group on Health
• HIV/AIDS strategic partners: Zimbabwe AIDS Network, Zimbabwe Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. Project partners include Seke Rural HBC, Batanai, St Theresa and MACO
• Education: Students Partnership Worldwide, Boost Foundation
• Long-term WASH partners: Institute of Water and Sanitation, and Harare Residents Association. New partners are being sought.

Gender Justice

The gender justice portfolio supports all the country programme teams in mainstreaming gender. In addition, the portfolio aims to address two key areas:

• Gender-based violence
• Women’s economic empowerment.

Under gender-based violence the project aims to raise awareness around violence among women and men in rural areas and to strengthen the reporting systems. The programme currently works with a men’s organisation Padare on preventing gender-based violence and upholding women’s rights, targeting men and boys and influential community leaders to address attitudes and beliefs. The programme is also developing projects for women’s economic empowerment to support women’s livelihoods. This will be done in conjunction with the economic justice team.

Women’s leadership and participation is mainstreamed throughout all the country programmes. The gender justice programme also supports the workplace HIV and gender programme, as well as Oxfam staff and partners to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation of the communities they work with.

Gender justice partners include local non-government and community-based organisations. Currently the programme works with five partner organisations in at least eight districts. These include: Padare Men’s Forum for Gender, Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association, Women and Law in Southern Africa, Sevaca, and Zimbabwe Young Women’s Network for Peace Building.

Policy and Advocacy

This portfolio supports all other thematic areas in spearheading policy and advocacy work. However, there are also stand-alone elements of this work that have a broader focus on issues of national interest which do not fall neatly into the areas discussed above.

The key objectives of policy and advocacy work are to:

• Identify and articulate policy issues in programming, and support programme and partner teams in analysing issues as well as highlighting short to medium-term programme and advocacy priorities
• Develop and implement policy/advocacy plans and strategies in line with identified priorities
• Identify research and policy needs, and commission and conduct research that will serve as an evidence base for influencing policy makers
• Network and engage in constructive dialogue with key stakeholders including policy makers, donors and private sector that are central to our programmes to influence policy and, in particular, the development, adoption and implementation of new and existing policies
• Work closely with the media as a tool for advocacy, lobbying and campaigning
• Contribute to Oxfam advocacy campaigns based on experience in Zimbabwe.

Joint Initiative Programme

The joint initiative for urban Zimbabwe is a co-ordinated response addressing short and medium-term needs of vulnerable communities through integrated programming. Oxfam and local partners have agreed to work together in a unique collaboration, utilising their respective organisational strengths and in-country networks to provide much-needed assistance in a variety of sectors including livelihoods support, food security, HIV and AIDS work, and social and child protection.

The key objectives of the project are:

• To enable vulnerable populations to have increased and integrated access to priority needs and services
• To support recovery and revitalisation of the local market economy through support to market catalysts such as traders, entrepreneurs, and opportunities for vocational skills
• To strengthen community mechanisms and national actors to collaboratively and transparently manage resources to address priority needs
• To advocate and share lessons learned on urban poverty and development in this dynamic and unique context.

The programme is implemented in six cities: Harare, Chitungwiza, Bulawayo, Mutare, Masvingo and Gweru.

The consortium is made up of five international non-governmental organisations implementing interventions through local partners. These include Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Care International, Africare, and Catholic Relief Services. Mercy Corps is the lead agency, through which pooled donor funding is channelled to support programme implementation by partner organisations. Current donors of the urban joint initiative are DFID, USAID/OFDA and New Zealand Aid.

Oxfam has a grant agreement with Mercy Corps and is working in partnership with Zimbabwe Project Trust with urban interventions in Mbare, Harare.

 

Last updated: December 2010