Food Security in Zimbabwe: The impact of Structural adjustment programmes, 1980-2000
Abstract
This study takes a critical political-economy approach to the analysis of food security in
Zimbabwe against the backdrop of Structural Adjustment Programmes implemented
between 1980 and 2000. It provides a comparative analysis of the pre-and-post
adjustment periods in Zimbabwe in order to illustrate the changes in the industrial and
agricultural sectors and the concomitant patterns in the availability and access to food.
It also explores the link between the implementation of market-based economic reform
and the erosion of purchasing power and the attendant decline of the legitimacy of the
Zimbabwean state that manifested in the form of popular resistance. Moreover, the link
between SAPs and the intensification of class relations/inequality at national level and the
perpetuation of a relationship of dependency between the developed and developing
world is explored.