Urban hunger spikes in Zimbabwe with 2.4 million people food insecure: WFP

'83 percent of households unable to afford basics such as mealie meal, salt, and cooking oil'

Lifeline… With the cash transfers she receives from WFP, Oppah is able buy staple foods for her family of 4 like vegetables, rice, beef and sadza from local markets in Harare South, which also stimulates the local economy. Here, Oppah is pictured purchasing vegetables from the local stall with a WFP e-voucher on her phone. (Picture Credit: WFP/Claire Nevill)

BULAWAYO – Zimbabwe has seen an increase in urban hunger over the past year with 2.4 million people now struggling to put food on the table, the World Food Program (WFP) said on Monday.

With diminished employment prospects and depleted livelihoods due to Covid-19 lockdowns, “42 percent of urban households will not be able to meet their cereal requirements this year compared to 30 percent in 2019,” the United Nations (UN) agency said, citing a new report from the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC).

ZimVAC is a technical advisory committee comprised of government representatives, development partners, UN agencies such as the WFP, NGOs, technical agencies, and academia.

“Families will find it difficult to put food on the table, most of them have been stuck at home and were not able to go to work, the fortunate ones will skip meals while those without will have to go to bed with an empty stomach,” WFP representative and country director Francesca Erdelmann said.

“For the most vulnerable people, hunger will have a lasting effect on their lives. The deteriorating hunger situation, caused by Covid-19 threatens to be their biggest challenge.”

The food assessment report, WFP said, found a sharp decline in the standard of living across poor metropolitan communities with 83 percent of households unable to afford basics such as mealie meal, salt, and cooking oil compared to 76.8 percent in 2019.

“One of the challenges faced by the urban households was sharp price increases of basic commodities while the purchasing power of the Zimbabwe dollar has been eroded by inflation and negative economic effects of Covid-19,” the UN agency added.

To mitigate the insecurity, WFP, which runs an urban assistance scheme that delivers monthly cash transfers to 326,000 people in 23 urban areas, says it plans to scale up the number of recipients to 550,000 and expand the programme to 28 areas.

Ramping up assistance… Maidei purchases food with a WFP electronic voucher in the urban area of Epworth in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. WFP and the Government of Zimbabwe estimate 2.4 million people in the country’s urban areas are now food insecure. In response, WFP is scaling up its urban assistance programme to reach 550,000 people. (Picture Credit: WFP/Claire Nevill)

Covid-19 effects… In Chiredzi, Zvidai is one of millions in Zimbabwe who WFP is assisting to put meals on the table for their families. Since she relies on informal labor Covic-19 lockdowns have hit her hard, but she is glad to see that her children are healthy again because they have enough to eat. (Picture Credit: WFP/Adrienne Bolen)

Under the programme, vulnerable households receive cash through electronic transfers and vouchers that enable them to buy food items from selected retailers, WFP said.

The UN food assistance agency said it was also implementing a scheme called the ‘Urban Social Assistance and Resilience Building Programme’ to “support long-term development so that vulnerable communities are better able to withstand shocks,”

“These include supporting urban agriculture such as mushroom and vegetable farming, building market linkages between rural-urban food value chains, setting up savings and lending groups and entrepreneurship training to support the establishment of small businesses.”