Building Resilience for Zero Hunger

Despite gains in food security and nutrition in the last decade, Zimbabwe is highly dependent on increasingly erratic rainfall: 1 million people are food-insecure, chronic undernutrition rates are high and despite some improvement 28 percent of children under 5 are stunted. Dietary diversity is poor and consumption of protein is insufficient. The prevalence of HIV and AIDS has declined, but at 13.7 percent it is the fifth highest globally.

WFP’s 2016–2020 strategy for Zimbabwe addresses these food security and nutrition challenges, with a focus on long-term recovery and resilience-building to remedy the underlying causes of food insecurity and undernutrition while maintaining strong capacity in humanitarian assistance.

Protracted relief and recovery operation 200944 will support the Government of Zimbabwe in achieving the following strategic results:

• the basic food needs of vulnerable populations are met all year round by 2030;
• the livelihoods of at least 30 percent of vulnerable households are more resilient to shocks and stressors by 2025; and
• efficient and effective cross-sectoral nutrition services contribute to reducing stunting to 10 percent by 2025.

Two other strategic results – improve the national social-protection system, and enhance the marketing capacities of smallholder farmers – will be achieved through separate development projects with parallel timeframes. To integrate the portfolio into the national social-protection and resilience-building systems, WFP will develop knowledge management and evidence-gathering approaches and help to upgrade the systems and institutions for achieving zero hunger.

This operation is aligned with the 2013–2018 Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation, the Malabo Declaration, the 2016–2020 United Nations Development Assistance Framework for Zimbabwe, Sustainable Development Goal 2 and Strategic Objectives 1, 2 and 3.