DFID: Working to reduce poverty in Zimbabwe

In 2007-8, DFID will provide approximately £38 million in aid for Zimbabwe. Our priority is to tackle HIV and AIDS and to reduce food insecurity. All funding is channelled through UN agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations. We do not provide direct funding to Government of Zimbabwe.

Health, HIV and AIDS

DFID has provided over £35 million to tackling HIV/AIDS and health priorities in Zimbabwe since 2002, and we will provide a further £47m over the next three years. Contraceptive use is high at 60% and continues to increase helping parents to plan their families with Zimbabwean women using more female condoms than any other country. DFID support will help ensure that an additional 30,000 people receive anti-retroviral AIDS treatment.

Food Security

The DFID funded Protracted Relief Programme assists the poorest and most vulnerable households suffering from the effects of erratic weather, economic decline and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We are helping to reduce the need for food aid by increasing food production by the poorest and also to improve access to water and sanitation, and provide care to the chronically ill. Over 330,000 households, (almost 1.6 million people) are benefiting from the programme. Low input gardens have significantly improved nutrition and incomes of beneficiaries. 800 new water points have been installed, benefiting over 160,000 people. Fertiliser and seed has improved crop yields by more than 40%. New low cost farming methods have increased crop yields by over 50%.

Humanitarian support

DFID will give £8 million to the World Food Programme as part of a wider appeal to provide food to about 4.1 million hungry people. In 2006 DFID approved £5 million for a 3 year programme to benefit mainly internally displaced people through the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) which includes temporary shelter and food. DFID and other donors are working with a group of NGOs to address growing urban poverty. The Joint Initiative targets over 700,000 urban poor in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, Masvingo and Gweru. We are supporting the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Zimbabwe.

Making progress against the Millennium Development Goals

DFID’s consistent support to male and female condom social marketing and behaviour change communication over the last decade is likely to have been important to the reduction in HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe. Numbers of children being immunised has increased.

Most of Zimbabwe’s other MDGs are unlikely to be achieved by 2015 unless the political and social situation improves dramatically. Child and maternal mortality indicators show a steadily worsening situation, exacerbated both by HIV and AIDS and by deteriorating health services. Health services deterioration is caused mainly by the drain of skilled human resources to other sectors/ countries, a shortage of medicines and supplies, shrinking access and lower demand for care.