Zimbabwe's Drought Relief Programme in the 1990s: A Re‐Assessment Using Nationwide Household Survey Data

Abstract

Zimbabwe's Drought Relief Programme was hailed in the 1980s and 1990s as an effective response to a food crisis in a poor country. International observers in particular credited the Programme with preventing famine and protecting livelihoods. Even before the current political turmoil and the ensuing politicisation of Drought Relief that have afflicted Zimbabwe since 2000, Zimbabwean authors were more sceptical about the effectiveness of Drought Relief. Both sides in the debate, however, failed to substantiate their arguments with national household survey data on who got what kind of assistance from Drought Relief, but rather relied on administrative data, qualitative interviews or sub‐national surveys. Drawing its inspiration from WHO's minimum evaluation procedure, this article uses data from four nationwide household surveys in 1992–1993 and 1995–1996 and various definitions of poverty to ask whether Drought Relief provided poor people with relevant, timely and adequate assistance in the 1990s. The analysis suggests that Drought Relief was effective in supporting drought‐affected smallholders during the 1990s. Drought Relief generally had a slight pro‐poor bias. Unfortunately, Drought Relief since 2000 has a very different character.