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WFP Zimbabwe Country Brief, April 2021

Countries
Zimbabwe
Sources
WFP
Publication date

In Numbers

7.1 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance from January to April 2021

2,598 MT food assistance procured in April 2021

US $3.8 million cash-based transfers made in April 2021

US $27.6 million shortfall (May – October 2021)

1.8 million people assisted in April 2021

Operational Updates

  • In April, WFP’s Lean Season Assistance programme scaled up to reach 1.5 million people across 28 rural districts with in-kind food assistance.

  • The Urban Food Security and Resilience Building programme is active in 24 urban domains across the country. A total of 321,813 people currently receive USD 12 per person per month via value voucher or remittance exchange. The transfer value is priced to cover 62 percent of an individual’s basic food needs.

  • In April, WFP provided in-kind food assistance to 13,691 refugees at Tongogara Refugee Camp.

  • WFP’s Small Grains project trained 160 AGRITEX extension workers and 60,357 smallholder farmers in 8 districts in climate-smart agricultural practices.

  • Crop monitoring activities conducted in 5 districts in April indicate that farmers supported by WFP will yield approximately 0.8 mt of grain per hectare, considerably more than the 0.25 mt per hectare harvested in 2020.

WFP Country Strategy

Under WFP’s five-year CSP, while maintaining a strong humanitarian assistance capacity, WFP is focusing on supporting longer-term national social protection and resilience-building efforts to achieve zero hunger. WFP is building on its innovative work in knowledge- and evidence-generation, while increasingly focusing on strengthening the systems and institutions that are ultimately responsible for sustainably reaching zero hunger in Zimbabwe.

Monitoring

  • WFP Zimbabwe’s Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) unit, in coordination with the Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) team, rolled out a revised verification tool for use under the Urban Social Assistance programme. Beneficiary verifications are ongoing across all new urban domains and will be conducted on a rolling basis over the coming months. WFP maintains a robust complaints and feedback mechanism (hotline, help desk, suggestion box) to ensure channels through which affected people can voice their needs and concerns.

Challenges

  • COVID-19 restrictions continue to hamper international procurement processes with bottlenecks occurring at border crossing points and with customs clearances, which have resulted in commodity pipeline breaks.

  • Zimbabwe continues to experience high levels of inflation and cash shortages (both local and foreign currency). Urban disbursements were impacted by the national COVID-19 lockdowns which resulted in store closures, reduced operating hours and reduced capacity of some cooperating partners. These challenges have lessened since lockdown restrictions were lifted on 01 March.

  • Stunting prevention activities are currently suspended due to resourcing constraints. Urgent funding is needed for the continued prevention and early mitigation of malnutrition.

Coming Up

  • WFP has started the process of developing a new strategic vision and portfolio of work for the Zimbabwe Country Strategic Plan (CSP) for 2022-2026. The Country Office has brought together an internal taskforce to conduct thematic appraisals and design the process of the next CSP.

  • In June, the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee is expected to release its analysis of the rural food security situation given the recently undergone maize harvest. This analysis will help inform WFP programming.