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.