Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
THE Government is disseminating information on the 2024 Rural Livelihoods Assessment findings at district and provincial levels to enhance food security and nutrition.
The initiative is meant to gather feedback on the assessment findings and evaluate the effectiveness of government interventions to address food insecurity and malnutrition.
Director-General of the Food and Nutrition Council Dr George Kembo highlighted that the primary objective of the exercise is to engage communities and discuss the assessment results.
“We are implementing the second phase of the Zimbabwe livelihoods assessment committee which phase is now to interact with the results where the community would interact with the findings and appreciate what was consolidated from the survey.
“The main objective is to expose the community to the situations that exist within their geographical area, be it a district or a province.
“At district level, we are looking at all government stakeholders and development partners and all relevant development stakeholders in those defined districts including the chiefs who were the key informants during the assessment and the village heads.
“We intend to interact with them. We identified a problem but you recall that the government responded with strategies to address food insecurity and malnutrition-related issues. Now we are saying, to what extend were the statistics more pure and correct and to what extent are the responses sensitive to the statistics that came out of the ZIMVAC.
“ So this is the discussion we are going to be having with the different stakeholders and also as part of continued monitoring system also to gauge and see the response in terms of support going to the most needy people,” said Dr Kembo.
The process involves various stakeholders, including government officials, development partners, chiefs and village heads.
“This process is important because we got to pick up certain challenges in our districts concerning food and nutrition, first of all, we discovered that 2% of households are receiving adequate nutrition diets and also that currently with the El-Nino induced drought there is poor food insecurity in our district,” said District Nutritionist for Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe(UMP), Ms Rumbidzai Magombeyi.
“We appreciate this dissemination exercise, it gives us a clear understanding of the findings and we also get to understand where we stand as a district in terms of food insecurity and other vulnerabilities.
“To cushion our vulnerable communities, we have established community gardens. When we started this project we were focusing on the nutrition aspect especially the most disadvantaged communities like here.
“We are looking at the patients, they come from various corners of the district and it’s very difficult to bring fresh vegetables so we said lets establish this garden it’s also assisting the inmates,” District Head for Agritex in UMP Mr Isaac Zvirevo said.
The 2024 Rural Livelihoods Assessment Report stands as a vital blueprint for Zimbabwe’s path forward, illuminating the complexities of rural livelihoods and guiding the development of tailored solutions to address the urgent needs of its citizens.
