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Community Assessment of the Food Situation in Zimbabwe June/July 2002: FULL REPORT
National NGO Food Security Network (FOSENET)
August 15, 2002

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Summary

1. Food needs are high: While specific wards were identified as high need, in one fifth of constituencies the whole constituency was identified as needing food. Maize shortages are the primary concern, but sugar, salt, cooking oil, beans and matemba shortfalls were reported as priorities to address.
2. Elderly people, orphans and young children were most commonly identified as vulnerable. Specific measures are needed to specifically enhance access in these groups that deal with barriers to GMB grain access from travel to depots, proof of origin through IDs (for orphans), long periods of queuing and food costs.
3. Reported vulnerability primarily derives from poverty, drought, inadequate food supplies into areas, child insecurity due to adult deaths from AIDS and political bias in food access. Of these poverty, the increasing cost of food due to speculation with food and distortions in access to GMB grains are exacerbating an underlying situation of inadequacy of harvests and GMB supplies.
4. Food deliveries from GMB have been variable and infrequent with an average of 1,5 reported deliveries per month, some areas reported as having frequent deliveries and others none at all. Wide variability in frequency of grain deliveries were reported even across neighbouring areas.
5. Relief activities were reported across a number of constituencies, more commonly in Manicaland and Masvingo.
6. In the absence of secure food supplies people are substituting maize for other staples or sourcing wild foods. Informal markets are a commonly reported source of foods, but at widely differing prices. Maize sales for example ranged from $11/kg to $24/kg at GMB depots, and from $20/kg to $85/kg at informal markets. Speculation with food is clearly widespread. Poor households forced to buy from more expensive informal markets are reported to be bartering goods for food, selling household assets or livestock to afford the costs of buying food and, in two areas, selling sex for money or food.
   
7. Wealth / poverty and political authority / discrimination were widely identified as factors enabling or impeding access to GMB and commercial sources of food. Access to informal sources was determined by cost. Positive discrimination in access to relief food was given to vulnerable groups, with few reports of political interference, mis-targeting or mismanagement and some lack of clarity reported at community level on targeting criteria.

Two major issues emerge from this report as fundamental to food security and food access:

• Poor people, especially those who are vulnerable due to age, orphanhood or other causes of marginalisation, have greater difficulty accessing food, particularly from GMB and commercial sources. As relief food is still sparsely distributed such people may depend on more expensive markets when they cannot access GMB food, and may thus be forced to sell household assets, driving even greater poverty. This situation is not sustainable and urgent measures are needed to ensure that the elderly, orphans and poorest are positively advantaged in accessing GMB food.

• Wealthy people, those with political or business influence, with power derived from their law enforcement role or other sources of power are accessing food and in some cases reported to be using this access to speculate with food by driving informal markets selling food at highly inflated prices. While this means that some people are making substantial amounts of money out of food, it also increases the inequity of who is accessing food. This widens the level of vulnerability and food insecurity.

Compounding this is the problem of a polarized political situation. Inadequate food supplies, reported failures by some people to access deliveries, non transparent procedures and overt political interference in food distribution have been reported. This reported bias is compounded by situations where people with economic or political influence or authority are reported to abuse that authority to access food at controlled prices and sell it on at high cost.

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