Tsiga market in Harare’s most densely populated suburb should be bustling with customers buying maize meal, cooking oil and other staples. Yet these days Tsiga, in the Zimbabwean capital’s Mbare district, is an increasingly empty and unhappy place. Traders say there are ever fewer buyers for goods that have surged in price, amid rising desperation over an economic crisis in the southern African nation that is threatening to morph into famine.
“Things are tough. People are saying it’s too hard to survive,” said Chengetai Takaindisa, a vendor, as she scrabbled for business. “[Customers] have to survive on one meal a day.”
Zimbabwe is already grappling with its worst economic crisis since the 2017 army coup that overthrew Robert Mugabe, the former dictator who died last month. Under his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and his ruling Zanu- PF party, the population has suffered daily power cuts, long fuel queues and currency chaos.
Now the country is also facing serious food shortages. The UN World Food Programme warned in August that it risked “marching towards starvation” next year.
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According to international estimates, 8.5m people — more than half the population — face uncertain food supplies by early 2020. Underlining the severity of the crisis, the number includes 3m people in cities, a contrast with previous food shortages, which mostly affected rural areas. Mr Mnangagwa’s government has begun buying grain abroad but it is in a race against time and has few financial resources.
Natural disasters are part of the explanation. Like other nations in the region, Zimbabwe was struck this year by two powerful cyclones that damaged farmland. A severe dry season, which peaked in August, compounded the damage and decimated the grain harvest.
But economic mismanagement has exacerbated the crisis, say analysts. “What makes it worse is that macroeconomic conditions are very bad at the moment,” said Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at South Africa’s Agricultural Business Chamber.
Buying power has collapsed as the new local currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, has more than halved in value since it was introduced earlier this year. Annual inflation hit 289 per cent in August, according to economists’ calculations based on official data. Urban dwellers who buy food rather than grow it are especially affected.
“Prices go up each and every day,” Ms Takaindisa said. Her own daily takings of about Z$50 ($3.30) would barely cover the cost of two bottles of cooking oil.
