Zimbabwe as the new carbon frontier: dangers ahead

Zimbabwe is presenting itself as the new carbon frontier – the investment destination of choice, with huge areas of forest land to trade on international markets in exchange for carbon credits. But is this wise, will it work, and will it make any difference to the climate?

In September 2023 a $1.5 billion contract for 7.5m hectares of land in Zimbabwe – some 20% of the country’s land area – was signed with a little-known outfit, Blue Carbon, based in Dubai whose founder and chair Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum is a member of Dubai’s royal family. Similar contracts reputedly are being prepared with Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, Liberia, Rwanda, Papua New Guinea, Bahamas and Dominica, along with maybe 40 other countries in the pipeline.

This came to light just before the global climate summit in Dubai, COP28, and supposedly showed how seriously the petrostate was taking the climate challenge. For others, it raised eyebrows and sparked concern.

The deal is supposed to be ratified under article 6.2 of the Paris climate agreement, whereby countries can make bilateral arrangements to offset carbon emissions under so-called ITMOs (Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes). Avoiding deforestation in another country then can be used to claim credits and to meet targets. Clearly Dubai has quite a lot to offset if it is to meet net zero targets, hence the huge area of land that is included. 

Carbon offsetting in the spotlight

Carbon offsetting as a route to climate change mitigation has come under much critique, especially when linked to forest and land use deals. There are so many technical problems – is the baseline realistic, is deforestation really expected, will the trees that are not cut down actually sequester the amount of carbon expected….? And so on.  

Studies of forest-based offset schemes have shown again and again that they do not deliver as expected. Indeed, a major investigation showed that over 90% of verified carbon projects were not achieving climate change mitigation claims as claimed. And this was through a previously well-respected verification agency, Verra, whose credibility was dashed (although they offered a riposte). There are unfortunately many, many more agencies in the ‘carbon cowboy’ trading market who are even less rigorous.

It is not just the technical claims of carbon offsetting that have been challenged, however. Commenting on carbon deals, and specifically the Blue Carbon agreements, the Financial Times noted that a new wave of land grabs was looming in Africa. How the Government of Zimbabwe thinks it can prevent use of currently unprotected forests over 20% of Zimbabwe’s land area is anyone’s guess, but attempts will be made to enclose, exclude and disenfranchise people from valuable resources in the desperate attempt to raise carbon funds. This is potentially green grabbing on a massive scale.

The collapse of a mega carbon project

This is not the first time that Zimbabwe has been at the centre of a large carbon project. The now infamous Kariba REDD+ project, established in 2011, works over 758,000 hectares, stretching from Binga through Hurungwe to Nyaminyami and Mbire. It is operated by a Harare-based company, Carbon Green, with a background in hunting and safaris in the Zambezi valley. It again was verified by Verra and backed by South Pole as consultants, and was expected to generate around 52 million carbon credits over the project lifetime.

A series of exposes on the project however have highlighted some major problems, with a long New Yorker profile projecting the case into the limelight. The project’s backers got cold feet, and Verra rescinded the verification, making the credits effectively worthless. South Pole then withdrew, leaving the project stranded, although some credits are apparently again being sold.

A decade ago, when the project was just getting going, Professor Vupenyu Dzingirai and Lindiwe Mangwanya of the University of Zimbabwe explored the project and its operations. The findings were published in a chapter of a book that I co-edited called Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa, published in 2015.

Even back then, questions were raised. The assumed pattern of deforestation that was projected into the future as the expected impact without the project were hugely unrealistic; the baseline area did not make sense as it was not comparable; the impacts on local communities were likely to be large; the ‘alternative livelihoods’ projects to compensate were minimal and often inappropriate; and so on. All familiar themes in carbon projects across Africa, as we show through other chapters in the book from across the continent.

A decade on these lessons have not been learned. In 2014, the projects were starting up, and REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) was seen as a potential solution. When we started our project, we were agnostic, even if sceptical of some of the grand claims. Across eight projects from east, west and southern Africa, we expected some to offer some hope. Sadly, this didn’t materialise and, as we outlined in the book’s introduction, all had similar problems, ones that have been replicated again and again over the years since, and across the world.

Africa at the forefront of new carbon deals

Yet, at COP28 in Dubai and at the Africa Climate Summit that preceded it, African governments were lining up to show that they had the forest/land resources to offer in exchange for carbon billions. President Ruto of Kenya claimed that Kenya would drive a climate revolution from Africa based on offset markets.

A decade ago, the price of carbon was low, and the voluntary carbon market was small. This has changed dramatically, with high quality (whatever that is) ‘boutique’ credits trading at much higher prices than those offered a decade back, despite the hit resulting from newspaper exposes during 2023. The voluntary carbon market is now valued at around US$2 billion and growing fast, despite concerns about the ‘integrity’ of the offer.

Recognising the limits of this market and the problems of quality assurance – especially following the series of high-profile exposes and the effective collapse of big flagship projects like Kariba REDD+ – there have been a number of global initiatives emerging to shore up the market, aiming to increase the ‘integrity’ of both the supply and demand sides.

But you must ask if these efforts really will deal with the big problems of dodgy deals in this market, and whether expecting offset markets to address the pressing problem of carbon emissions is likely to have any real impact. Meanwhile, more stringent science-based targets are also being watered down.

No prospects for a happy ending

My agnosticism of a decade ago has disappeared. The experience of project after project shows that there are perennial problems with measurement, verification and claims of ‘permanence’,  ‘additionality’, and so actually achieving climate mitigation while improve forest-based livelihoods (just search through the database on the REDD Monitor website for a flavour of the sorry tale).

Despite well-meaning voluntary regulation and standard setting, this is largely not having an impact in the field of forest/land-use offset schemes. Even previously well-respected agencies like Verra have been found wanting, let alone the safeguards for mega ITMO projects like the Blue Carbon deals.

It’s a wild-west market where everyone thinks that they can make a quick buck, and there are plenty of claims made that have little value. With African leaders entering the fray offering huge areas of national asset on such markets, the prospects for a happy ending – both for local people and the climate – look far off.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

The politics of Zimbabwe’s land reform: winners and losers

The political debates about the rights and wrongs of Zimbabwe’s land reform continue to occupy many. The tired, old obsession about how the land was taken and the associated focus on so-called ‘cronies’ persists, despite much evidence to suggest that the process was highly varied and that most land was occupied by land poor peasants and unemployed people from town, even if some high value land was captured by political elites. A failure to grasp the complexity of land politics in Zimbabwe plagues policy debates, and the myths that we thought we had challenged in our book 14 years ago frustratingly still rear their head in discussions with donor officials, diplomats, journalists, foreign academics and many others.

Understanding the political implications of the land reform is important, as the articles profiled in this fifth and final blog in the series on new literature on Zimbabwe’s land reform show. For many, the land reform was popular, even if everyone acknowledges the benefits were unevenly shared. The ruling party knows this and continues to deploy land and liberation rhetoric during election periods. Even the opposition parties agree that land reform is a done deal. But what in-depth research can reveal is how the politics of land plays out in both the countryside and in peri-urban areas where land reform occurred and how the dynamics of accumulation, differentiation and elite capture results in new interests and political alliances.

Along with many others, we have written quite a bit about this, whether in relation to the politics of A2 farms or the regional politics of the countryside in the lowveld (see the section in our online book of articles). What is clear that the dynamics of land invasions, the patterns of subsequent social differentiation and the political mix that emerges is highly varied across the country (including between different rural and (peri-)urban areas) and has changed over time.

Changing land politics in the Second Republic

The processes of accumulation and their political drivers have changed significantly over the last 24 years. After the relative continuity of the Mugabe years, it was the ‘coup’ that installed Emmerson Mnangagwa that brought in some significant changes. The rhetoric of Zimbabwe being ‘open for business’ hailed a much more explicit commitment to neoliberal style economic policy aimed at encouraging investment and facilitating entrepreneurship.

The politics of the so-called Second Republic under Mnangagwa is discussed in an edited book edited by Gorden Moyo and Kirk Helliker. This is a companion volume to Grasian Mkodzongi’s excellent edited book, The Future of Zimbabwe’s Agarian Sector, which again looks at the post Mnangagwa era focusing in on agrarian issues (including our chapter on the politics of A2 farms). Both books signal the important changes that have unfolded since 2017, making the agrarian dynamic in land reform areas even more complex.  While only touched on briefly in these books, the post-2017 period has also been marked by a continued collapse of the economy and a massively expanded scale of corruption. While present before, the corruption that Thomas Mapfumo complained about in his 1989 release is vast, reaching throughout the economy and across the state with major implications for land politics, and wider livelihood opportunities. The cabinet minister, Maurice Nyagumbo, who took his own life in 1989 because he was ashamed of being linked to the Willowgate scandal involving the illegal sale of government vehicles on the black market, would be truly appalled.

Accumulation from above and below

In his paper in the Journal of Southern African Studies – Social Differentiation and ‘Accumulation from Above’ in Zimbabwe’s Politicised Agrarian Landscape, Phillan Zamchiya extrapolates his very interesting and thorough field studies from Chipinge to make a wider case about how land reform is a process of ‘accumulation from above’. He argues that much work (including our own and that of the Sam Moyo African Institute of Agrarian Studies) offers only a ‘materialist explanation’ of social differentiation, centred on an analysis of class dynamics, while not paying close enough attention to the role of wider state practices and political processes involved in shaping accumulation dynamics in highly politicised agrarian landscapes. Making use of the late Alex Magaisa’s database on farm mechanisation, he argues that there was significant capture by ruling party elites in a process of extended patronage including cabinet ministers, judges, members of the security sector, civil servants, national election administrators and traditional leaders. Noone denies that this happened (the government data show it), but much field-based data shows that the extent of such patronage was quite contained. Most land reform beneficiaries saw none of these benefits, just as has been the case with command agriculture. This well documented pattern – in our sites in Masvingo only 1% of households received anything from the scheme – makes this critique somewhat puzzling.

As Mahmood Mamdani argued long ago (and by Ben Cousins more recently), processes of accumulation from above and below work in tandem. The task of the analyst is to tease out how they intersect and influence the outcomes over time. In some cases it may be that elite patronage dominated (and perhaps this was so in the Chipinge case study as it did not involve a land invasion involving a diverse array of people), but in other cases (and certainly all ours, even in the high potential area of Mvurwi) the dynamic of accumulation from below is the main story, certainly in all A1 cases and even most A2 ones too (although these have been less successful).  Inevitably there have been successes and failures of land reform, each with political consequences.  

Land contests in peri-urban spaces

As readers of this blog will know, our work has concentrated on rural areas across the country, but land politics is especially hot in urban areas, as earlier blogs have discussed. A number of new papers focus on these processes. For example, Aaron Rwodzi argues in an article in the Southern Journal for Contemporary History – Land Resettlement and Elite Monopoly in Peri-urban Harare: The Colonial Legacy of Land Ownership in Post-colonial Zimbabwe, 2000-2019 – that in the case of urban Harare “instead of land being distributed to the deserving poor peasants, farmers and the vulnerable, land barons emerged from the ruling elite, business tycoons and war veterans who allocated to themselves land and multiple farms”. This had important echoes of what happened during the colonial land distribution process. The lack of political accountability of such land barons and their patrons meant that a politically powerful group could emerge in these urban areas following land reform, both restricting access to land and exerting (party) political control. Jo McGregor and Kudzai Chatiza offer an important analysis of why such patronage dynamics, firmly linked to ruling party power, emerge in peri-urban spaces. Again taking the case of Harare in the book chapter, The Politics of Harareʼs Periphery, they show how the emergence of a strong opposition politics in Zimbabwe’s urban areas resulted in a strategy by the ruling party to impose control over the peri-urban areas, and particularly through land.

This pattern of political control is also observed by Johannes Bhanye, Ruvimbo Hazel Shayamunda, Rumbidzai Irene Mpahlo, Abraham Matamanda and Lameck Kachena in their Land Use Policy paper, Land politics and settlers’ responses to land tenure under threat in emerging peri-urban spaces in Zimbabwe. Based on a case study from Caledonia peri-urban settlement east of Harare, the paper focuses on the lived experiences of vulnerable peri-urban settlers, documenting the struggles against land grabbing by influential elites and attempts at regulation by local authorities. Unlike the other studies that focus on the practices of land barons and the role of the ruling party, this paper is more grounded in the actual practices of local residents. They argue for a perspective on ‘insurgent citizenship’, which “challenges the notion of passive vulnerability among poor urbanites or settlers”, as they are able to develop ways to protect their land including developing political alliances, pursuing legal action, carrying out civil disobedience and invoking religious symbolism to safeguard their land rights. The paper reveals novel forms of power in these urban spaces, emerging through the agency of residents defending their land.

No single story

Some researchers persist in claiming that the process of land reform was one that was driven only by political patronage. But these claims either emerge from a political stance that rejects the land reform outright or through the selective interpretation of particular case studies – or some combination of the two. As much research has shown, there is of course no single story of land reform in Zimbabwe. Different places – across rural areas, between rural and urban – have different dynamics. The tension between the agency of farmers or urban residents and the impositions of the state and elites interplays in shaping land politics. There are processes of both accumulation from below and above, but unravelling how this happens, to whom and where is the key task for analysts, rather than confidently asserting one storyline that fits a particular political position.

This is why research on Zimbabwe’s land reform remains so important, and why debates over interpretations of different cases, rooted in different methodological assumptions, are always essential. This is also why working on Zimbabwe’s ongoing post land reform story remains so exciting, and why this annual review of available literature is so enriching.

This is the last blog in this year’s compilation of new literature. I’m sure I’ve missed some so please send publications to me or link to them in a comment to a blog in the series. Let’s hope that the collective effort around researching Zimbabwe’s land reform will continue to illuminate and inform.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Commercialising agriculture in Zimbabwe: new research on the political economy of agricultural development

This is the fourth blog in a series summarising new research on Zimbabwe’s land reform. In this blog, I look at newly published material on agricultural commercialisation and the shifting political economy of command politics and capitalist expansion.

The land reform from 2000 overturned the old dualist system of large-scale (largely white) commercial agriculture and small-scale communal area systems, creating a trimodal agrarian structure, with resettlement farms being larger than communal area plots and smaller than most former commercial farms. As Tom Tom describes in his review – From Bimodal to Trimodal Agrarian Transformation: Agrarian Changes in Zimbabwe’s New Resettlement Areas Two Decades – this transformation resulted in not only redistribution of land and changes in tenure regimes but also “the sociocultural, economic, and political texture of the hitherto predominantly white-owned large-scale farms.” The chapter looks at a whole host of themes but highlights in particular the emergence of new forms of agricultural production relation, notably land leasing, joint ventures, sharecropping and contract farming linked to processes of agricultural investment, commercialisation and mechanisation. The trajectories of accumulation that this results in creates divergent and highly complex outcomes affected by the type of crop, the form of commercial contract, the role of state support and factors such as climate change, as the papers reviewed below show.

Crop contracting driving commercialisation

Several new papers focus on both sugar and tobacco as commercial crops driving this pattern of commercialisation, particularly via contract arrangements. The role of external capital in the form of large investors and processors is key in both facilitating and constraining the possibilities of accumulation on land reform farms. Freedom Mazwi and Walter Chambati in their paper in the Canadian Journal of Development Studies – Diversification of sugar production in Zimbabwe: wealth accumulation from below by outgrowers – highlights how over 1000 black sugar outgrowers who received land through land reform have accumulated – supporting processes of farm mechanisation – while being reliant on the support of transnational capital. The study extends earlier research by ourselves and Mazwi on the success of outgrower sugar production, despite the assumption that it would never work. Nevertheless despite this ‘accumulation from below’, contract relations with sugar companies remain exploitative through monopolistic pricing of inputs and outputs, resulting in significant rents accruing to transnational capital. While the new producers could not do without the companies who finance inputs, labour and provide water and a guaranteed market, companies’ ability to extract profits acts to “slow down the pace of accumulation”.

Focusing in on Mkwasine sugar estate in the southeast lowveld, Francis Muromo and Paramu Mafongoya, the paper in the journal Global Research in Environment and Sustainability,  Emerging Dynamics in Mkwasine Sugar Estate after the Land Reform in Zimbabwe, highlights how reconfigured land ownership structures and tenure regimes has resulted in significant tensions and conflicts between the new farmers (400 settlers each on 10-20 hectares of irrigated land each) and the estate, owned by Tongaat Hullet Group and between farmers themselves. A move from a centralised estate managed by a single company to a complex contracting arrangement increases transactions costs and can result in conflicts over allocation of resources, irrigated water flows and most notably market prices offered. Under the new post-land reform arrangements, new governance arrangements are needed, including mechanisms for conflict negotiation and resolution.

State support: the role of ‘command agriculture’

In an attempt to boost staple crop production (maize in particular) the state adopted the ‘command agriculture’ approach. This was a form of contract farming, involving the supply of soft loans to farmers with large farms and (usually) irrigation infrastructure. As Freedom Mazwi and Paris Yeros argue in a paper in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, the constraints on capital and wider finance in Zimbabwe’s sanctioned economy and the focus of investment under neoliberalism on export crops such as sugar and tobacco, led to underinvestment in staple food crops, undermining national food security. The article titled ‘Zimbabwe’s Command Agriculture: Problems of Planning Under Neoliberalism’, highlights the potentials of state planning to offset the biases of neoliberalism, and the policies foisted on African countries by the likes of the World Bank.

Somewhat controversially, the study contends that there is a “a distinct correlation between national food self-sufficiency and, to some extent, economic stability and growth under state intervention and planning.” State-led stimulus and planning initiatives can, they suggest, result in boosts in “economic growth and development if well managed.” The proviso that such efforts must be well managed is crucial as much evidence, including some shared in the paper showed that political patronage and corruption influenced and, in the end, undermined the command agriculture programme. However, the article offers a more positive conclusion, recalling earlier state-building efforts around land and food arguing that “state planning in cereal production poses a threat to neoliberalism and the hierarchical international food system, and is an important step toward attaining national sovereignty.”

Clearly in attempts to commercialise agriculture following land reform, relying on contracting, joint ventures and so on driven by international and local capital is insufficient. Experiences of such efforts show that, while those involved in the contracting arrangements benefit, allowing some ‘accumulation from below’, there are limits to what is possible, as only some crops are suitable for contracting and inevitably contract arrangements reflect power imbalances allowing often external capital to benefit at the expense of local farmers. Addressing such inequities and the lack of finance for other crops, the role of the state is crucial, as has long been argued in debates about agricultural development, from the Asian Green Revolution onwards. A well-targeted, subsidised loan investment can help get things moving, allowing capital poor farmers to produce for the nation. The challenge in the Zimbabwe case is how to facilitate this without extensive rent-seeking by those involved. In this respect, while the principle of command agriculture has a clear logic, especially in Zimbabwe’s siege economy, the practice has often been less than ideal.

Climate change: towards resilient forms of agricultural commercialisation

Climate change is another factor that can upset successful pathways to commercial agriculture, particularly in smallholder settings that are especially vulnerable to rainfall variability induced by climate change. In a paper in Climate and Development, Andrew Newsham, Lars Otto Naess, Khamaldin Mutabazi, Toendepi Shonhe, Gideon Boniface  and Tsitsidzashe Bvute explore the climate resilience of different agricultural commercialisation pathways in both Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

Through highlighting the underlying causes of uneven distributions of vulnerability and resilience, the research finds that those who are most vulnerable, and so would benefit from boosts in agricultural incomes through commercialisation, are least able to adapt to climate change and develop resilient systems. This they refer to as the ‘adaptation trap’, suggesting the need for tailored approach to so-called climate-smart agriculture that takes account of differential patterns of vulnerability (and so class, gender and age differentiation) to climate change, as well as the potential for commercialisation.

Pathways to commercial agriculture

Land reform disrupted the core white-owned commercial agricultural sector through land redistribution. The expectation was that by distributing land to a diversity of producers – operating on small, medium and large scales – a new form of commercial agriculture, able to generate surpluses and drive accumulation from the agricultural sector for a greater number of people, would arise.

While there have been (for many) unexpected successes with tobacco and sugar, driven through contracting with smallholder land reform beneficiaries, the commercialisation of other crops has not been so vibrant. This is largely because of lack of finance in the cash constrained economy, which has been subject to mismanagement, corruption and sanctions for now over two decades. In order to revive agriculture as a core sector, policy has focused on a business-oriented, commercial drive for agriculture in recently years. After 2017, President Mnangagwa’s regime has encouraged investment and the liberalisation of joint venture and land leasing arrangements.

As a result, there has been a growth of new forms of arrangement facilitating agricultural investment and commercialisation. As our research has shown, this has happened in A1 areas, but particularly occurs in the A2 medium-scale farms, which had suffered years of under-investment. Patterns of consolidation and a growing land market (for both notional (illegal) purchase and leasing) has resulted in shifts in agrarian relations, and some argue a reversal in the gains of the reform. The varied role of external contract, state subsidy, patronage and climate change shapes the diverse pathways to commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe as this newly published research shows.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Changing ideas of belonging and identity in post-land reform Zimbabwe

This is the third in a short blog series on Zimbabwe research published recently. The theme of belonging and identity in the post-land reform setting has attracted a lot of research attention recently. As a whole suite of papers published in 2022 showed, negotiating belonging in a complex, fast-changing political landscape is not straightforward.

In 2000 or thereabouts people moved onto land from communal areas and towns to land that they often had no previous association with. Farm workers who joined the land invasions may have worked on the land and lived there sometimes for generations, but it was definitively not theirs. Many claimed ancestral connections to the land, given the existence of grave sites and chiefs and headmen competed with different narratives about who ‘owned’ the land. As resettlement farms became ‘home’ – where people lived and died and were often buried – then associations with the land changed, but the mix of people who came on land reform to the A1 resettlement farms meant that the process of creating communities and a sense of belonging was a process, one that continues to this day.

As reported on this blog before, Walter Chambati and Freedom Mazwi published a great paper in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy in in 2022, which delves into these themes. Just as the important book – Livelihoods of Ethnic Minorities in Rural Zimbabwe–  also reviewed last year, Chambati and Mazwi’s paper titled “The Land Belongs to Us”: Ethnic Claims Over Land During Zimbabwe’s Land Reforms explores how ethnicity – and what they call ethno-regionalism – intersects with class, political party affiliation, gender, citizenship, and generation. They argue that “ethno-regionalism was inevitable in the small-scale A1 farms, since it mainly resettled peasants near their communal areas of origin. However, in the small capitalist A2 farms, ethnic tensions were perceived through exclusions of the “insiders,” as they were edged out of the allocations by the urban middle classes seeking accumulation opportunities in the context of an economic crisis.” Such exclusions fuel ongoing grievances in certain areas, where demands for land from ‘indigenous’ people is seen to be marginalised by those connected to political elites, with either Zezuru (in the Mugabe era) or Karanga (in the Mnangagwa era) identities. The attempt to sideline ethnically based claims in Zimbabwe’s land reform (there is no provision for ‘restitution’ for example, unlike South Africa) may be undermined by an increasingly embedded ethno-regional politics.

A great paper by Malvern Marewo, Belonging and Agrarian Labour Exchanges in Zimbabwe: Navigating Between Communal Areas and Fast Track Villagised Settlements, published in Africa Spectrum looks at labour exchanges between A1 resettlement farmers and those in their communal areas of origin based on kinship and friendship ties. A case study from Mashonaland West shows that a sense of belonging is vital in labour exchanges and so enabling livelihoods. The article concludes that “belonging-based labour exchange enhances agricultural production and livelihoods in a new land ownership and economic circumstances.” Another paper by Marewo in the Journal of Southern African Studies explores other connections of ‘belonging’ between A1 farms and communal areas. These remain important, although in our sites they are on the wane given the span of time since settlement. Even burials are now occurring much more frequently in the resettlement areas. However, despite changes, more than 20 years after land reform these relations, connections and networks are central to sustaining the very social basis of production and livelihoods in the resettlements. Far from the idea of the resettlements being separated from ‘traditional’ systems, and so becoming ‘modern’ and ‘productive’ according to a technical frame, long run social ties based on extended kin networks are important, and the links between the communal and resettlement areas remain strong.

An ethnically identified, racial sense of belonging to the land of course continues to influence policy debates that plague the post-land reform period. Claims of compensation by former white farmers still have not been resolved, as political disputes persist about who are the rightful ‘owners’ of the land in the context of a liberation struggle and decolonisation process. Racially inflected assumptions abound, whether around who are the ‘successful’ farmers and what ‘farming’ should look like in contemporary Zimbabwe (often by implication of white colonial styles of farming) and who is ‘indigenous’ and so has rights to land and commitment to the nation. As an intriguing paper by Ntina Tzouvala – Invested in Whiteness: Zimbabwe, the von Pezold Arbitration, and the Question of Race in International Lawon the famous case centred on the appropriation of land in the Forrester estate in Mvurwi. This investment was protected by a Bilateral Investment Treaty (a so-called BIPPA arrangement) and the case, the paper suggests, highlights how some of the assumptions of international law assume particular versions of racialised ownership and claims, allowing “the arbitrators to artificially separate the question of race/ism from questions of property and wealth distribution, capitalist accumulation, and exploitation.” A focus on racially defined property relations is a reflection of (neo)liberal domestic and international legal systems”, which acts to make “racial capitalism as a structure of dispossession, exploitation and abandonment” invisible.

Race, ethnicity and constructions of identity have a huge influence on narratives of land ownership and senses of belonging to the land. In the context of Zimbabwe, the legacy of settler colonialism means that debates about land and race are never far away. While Mugabe’s post-Independent Zimbabwe initially strived to create a unified nation, inclusive of all ethnic identifications, the land reform caused divisions as forms of politicised ethno-regionalism and claims of racial discrimination in land appropriation held sway. Exacerbated by the framing of legal interventions and the ethnicization of political patronage systems in Zimbabwe, these themes are increasingly surfaced in today’s on-going struggles over land.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Gender and generation: social reproduction and livelihood change following Zimbabwe’s land reform

This is the second in a short series of blogs reviewing recent literature on Zimbabwe’s land reform. The theme of gender and generation is a crucial one. Land reform changed gender relations as women gained access to land, sometimes in their own right. Old patriarchal relations typical of the communal areas were in some instances overturned as women gained opportunities as a result of land reform. This is not to say that the new scenario was truly equitable, as men have dominated certain areas of production – notably cash crops and large livestock – and very often control marketing, and so income flows to a household.

With men increasingly at home due to the decline in off-farm employment opportunities that once saw men moving to jobs in towns, mines or large-scale farms for periods of their lives. This old pattern of circular migration saw women take charge of the rural home as well as agricultural production. While migration has not ceased, a different pattern is seen and husbands and sons are more frequently around at home on the resettlement farms engaging in farming. With larger land areas, this requires a different type of farming to that seen in the communal areas, and for many households a more collaborative style of farming has emerged, involving both men and women and across generations.

Gendered impacts of land reform

A study by Clement Chipenda published in Goromonzi and Zvimba districts looked at agrarian labour and social reproduction outcomes for both A1 and A2 farmers in land reform areas. The paper published in the International Journal of Community Well-Being shows how land reform “facilitated the creation of employment opportunities, enhanced the productive and reproductive capacities of land reform beneficiaries, enabled wealth distribution and improved rural livelihoods”. However, because of the lack of resolution of Zimbabwe’s agrarian challenges due to on-going sanctions and the persistence of neoliberal context, there remains what they call “super-exploitation of labour”, which is reminiscent of the settler colonial era, meaning that much has not changed, especially for women and the more marginalised settlers. However, the field data from interviews with around 200 households shows how overall, “redistributive land reform has contributed to socio-economic transformation and enhanced citizens’ welfare and wellbeing”.

This does not necessarily translate into indicators of improved nutrition, as Kingstone Mujeyi and Jackqeline Mutambara show in a paper in Social Science and Humanities Open. Despite expectations that land reform would deliver improved nutritional outcomes as a result of greater access to land, more production and so greater amounts and diversities of food, data from a large survey show that women beneficiaries of land reform do not show improved nutritional status compared to communal area counterparts, even if dietary diversity is slightly higher. The article argues that this is down to poor education, lack of extension and limited networking to share information.

I wonder though if this is the full story, as women – whether in communal or land reform settings – know perfectly well how to improve their nutrition. This pattern was seen in the 1980s resettlement areas studied by Bill Kinsey and colleagues, where they suggested that larger households in resettlement areas meant that even with more food and income, it had to be shared with more people result in no net gains per person, and sometimes declines as the ‘magnet effect’ of land reform operated. We have seen a similar dynamic in our study areas, and this may be reflected in the national data reported here. Another intriguing hypothesis is that outcomes are more to do with sanitation and the ’shit factor’ than available food, as poor sanitation results in food not being effectively assimilated, resulting in declines in nutritional indicators. With the lack of basic infrastructure support (notably the building of pit latrines and the supply of boreholes and piped water) in the resettlement areas due to government neglect and the absence of aid agency/NGO projects due to sanctions, those living in land reform areas often have poor water and sanitation conditions compared to communal areas, which benefited from the hey-day of rural development in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Outcomes of land reform are of course highly varied – across time, between places and in relation to different categories of people. Former farmworkers, now often living within land reform areas but without significant areas of land for farming and no stable work, are a group who have often lost out from land reform, despite impressive, innovative adaptation to the new context. As Tom Tom and Resina Banda show in a fascinating paper in Feminist Africa, how female former farm workers have often suffered following land reform. As they note, a focus on women in the former farm worker populations has been absent from the literature, but they very often rely on precarious livelihoods, resulting in poverty, inequality, and marginalisation. Based on on-going work in Zvimba district in Mashonaland West province, the study highlights the variegated impacts of land reform on social protection and social reproduction for women. Despite successfully following diverse livelihoods have more agency than in their previous roles as dependent workers on large-scale workers, many are materially worse off than before, with major challenges for social reproduction and the ability to survive shocks to livelihoods. This is because of lack of policy attention to this group and the persistent gender hierarchies in (former) farm worker communities.

Generational questions: how can young people benefit from land reform?

In a book chapter called The Youth and Land Access Challenges: Critical Reflections from Post-Fast Track Land Reform Zimbabwe, Clement Chipenda and Tom Tom offer a useful overview of the generational questions emerging following land reform. 24 years after land reform, there is a new generation of children of settlers demanding land and seeking livelihoods and, as our research has shown, this presents many challenges. How can young people be accommodated on the land allocated to their parents? What forms of investment are required to generate livelihoods for the next generation? What social, political and economic relations emerge that transform the land reform areas one generation on? Based on extensive research particularly in Goromonzi and Zvimba districts, the chapter explores many of these questions. Formal access to land for young people is highly constrained as new allocations usually rely on local patronage networks, which they are not part of. Access to ‘political capital’ was seen as essential by youth informants in focus groups. As a consequence, most sought land through informal means, either through subdivisions or land sharing with parents or via land lease arrangements with settlers or through gaining access to small patches of land near rivers or dams that could be irrigated. Without formal rights to land in either case, young people have limited security presenting problems for the longer term as land reform areas transform across generations.

Vusilizwe Thebe and Elizabeth Shawa-Mangani in a paper in the Journal of Asian and African Studies show how youth land occupiers in Lupane district navigate a new livelihood following land invasions that started in 2012. Based on research in three villages over 10 years, the study shows how over time the land claimed was not necessarily used for farming as the sole sources of accumulation but as a base for the development of ‘worker-peasant’ livelihoods as the (now older) youth engaged in employment and combined off-farm work with small scale farming. A series of in-depth cases are at the core of the paper, highlighting how livelihoods are composed in an area where migrant labour has been central to the economy for a century. The struggle for land is, as the paper argues, intimately tied up with struggles over the wider economy, and in many places access to jobs is the crucial factor, even if having a secure rural base to call home is important. Land invasions as protests and demonstrations (as in the long tradition of madiro  ‘freedom farming’ in Zimbabwe) provide a signal to the wider authorities. Unlike some policy narratives that land and agriculture will be a saviour for youth unemployment and discontent, this article highlights that the story is more complex and complex on and off farm livelihoods, including migration, will always be part of young people’s livelihoods in places like Lupane.

Negotiating land reform opportunities

The themes of gender and generation are essential in understanding the changing patterns of social reproduction in land reform areas, as these articles and chapters show. While land reform opened up opportunities for some, others – such as young people or farm workers who were not allocated land during the fast-track reform phase – must negotiate the complex social and political landscape of land reform areas to gain access to land and make a livelihood.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Livelihood change after land reform: new research from Zimbabwe

At the beginning of each year, I try and catch up on the ever-growing literature on land, agriculture and rural change in Zimbabwe. Each year there seems to be more and more, as the body of work grows based on many research studies, often linked to Masters’ and PhD projects by Zimbabwean students. It is an impressive testament to the depth and extent of scholarship associated with Zimbabwe, making it an on-going privilege for me to continue to contribute to, and hopefully support, this work. Given the volume of material, this year I have had to divide my review into five separate themes. The short blog series over the next five weeks offers a brief overview of material produced during (mostly) 2023, with links to the articles, chapters or books.

The first theme is livelihood change after land reform, one that has been central to the work of our team over many years. More and more case studies are being published that show both the continuities between sites, but also some of the important variations. For example, the paper by Tanaka Maimba and Vusi Thebe, “Changing Livelihoods and New Opportunities: Experiences of Resettled Farmers in Two Farms in Shamva District, Mashonaland Central Province, Zimbabwe” in the Journal of Land and Rural Studies shows once again that the majority of those on the land have benefited, building assets and improving livelihoods. If anyone continues to doubt the benefits of Zimbabwe’s land reform given the accumulated evidence, then I wonder. The paper also points out though that there are limitations, and the lack of post land reform government support is clearly hampering local initiatives.

The particular experience of borderland communities – in Kariba, the southeast lowveld, Manicaland and Matabeleland South among other sites – is explored in the edited collection – Lived Experiences of Borderland Communities in Zimbabwe. Livelihoods, Conservation, War and Covid-19. This book was edited by Nedson Pophiwa, Joshua Matanzima and Kirk Helliker and is the seventh in a remarkable series emerging from the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University. The 12 chapters illuminate how borders are always porous, connecting people and markets in ways that have been essential for many struggling to survive in a collapsing economy. The practices of those who live on the borders highlight how lines on a map become irrelevant when lives and livelihoods straddle geographies. As the introduction notes, “viewing the nation-state ‘from the margins’ offers fresh perspectives on Zimbabwean history and society”.

Integrating small-scale and artisanal mining within rural livelihood systems

An important strand of work complements the studies of land-based agricultural livelihoods after land reform and focuses on the intersections of farming and artisanal mining. The work of Grasian Mkodzongi is especially important in this regard.  In his latest paper in the Journal of Rural Studies, he offers a review of this work, focusing on gold mining. This shows clearly how the growth of small-scale mining has generated incomes and employment for poor urban and rural people alike. Integrating with land reform processes across the Great Dyke region of the country, where much land redistribution took place is an important dynamic. Yet the informal nature of artisanal mining means that it is dangerous, subject to corrupt practices and overall poorly regulated, and often dismissed by the state who prefer large-scale operations. The article makes the case that a more appropriate policy framework is needed that allows the potentials of small-scale mining to be realised.

In a recent edited book, The Lives of Extraction. Identities, Communities and the Politics of Place, Joseph Mujere takes a look at chromite mining and the role of cooperatives as a route to articulating with larger mining firms, including now many Chinese ones. The brokered relationships between small-scale operations and those who are able to provide capital, machinery and so on is changing the nature of the mining sector. In the study area in Mapanzure multiple Chinese companies are operating with a whole array of often informal contracting arrangements. This has implications for how resources are used, what regulations are applied and who benefits from mining. As mining becomes an increasingly important part of rural livelihoods, beyond the old dynamic of men going to work in large, corporate mines, these types of commercial and political arrangements become important to understand.

COVID-19: transforming rural livelihoods

As our work during the COVID-19 pandemic showed, the lockdowns were deeply resented by rural people as they undermined the ability to market agricultural produce. A similar story is told by Senzeni Ncube and Horman Chitonge in paper titled, Land-Based Livelihoods and the Covid-19 Challenge: Navigating the Social Capital-Social Distancing Tension on A1 Villages in Zimbabwe in the European Journal of Development Studies. The study based on research on a land reform farm in Bubi District, Matabeleland North Province shows how in A1 land reform farms, enforced social distancing undermined many of the core practices that sustain livelihoods in rural areas, which are all based on interpersonal contact and networking. Social capital, and so connections between people, is essential in production, marketing, and wider provisioning, and is core to the livelihood system.

Changing livelihoods following land reform: a complex picture

Studies of the changing livelihood dynamics following land reform remain vitally important. While the basic story that land reform benefited people (although differentially) and that these included many poor and un/underemployed people, the changing patterns over time and across places remain important to understand. Major shocks such as COVID-19, but also droughts, economic collapse and so on, have profound effects on who is able to make the most of land reform, while changing economic opportunities, such as through artisanal and small-scale mining, can dramatically shift the resource values and so use in an area. While our team continues to concentrate on various parts of Masvingo, Mvurwi and Matobo, having new research come out to compare and contrast with from across the country is really useful.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Zimbabweland end-of-year wrap-up, 2023

As has become traditional, I have compiled a list of blogs published during 2023 that have been most read. Always slightly arbitrary I know as those published most recently don’t get much of a chance to appear – anyway, the 2023 top 15 ‘greatest hits’ are below.

• Livestock populations decimated by ‘January disease’ in Zimbabwe: diverse local responses

• Conversations on Zimbabwe’s land reform: “well, it’s a bit more complex than that….”

• The growth of small and medium-scale poultry production in Zimbabwe

• Negotiating ‘belonging’ in Zimbabwe’s land reform areas

• Preparing for the next pandemic: lessons from Zimbabwe

• Small-scale agricultural mechanisation is taking off in Zimbabwe

• The ‘hidden middle’: the transformation of agri-food systems in Africa

• Commercialising horticulture in Zimbabwe: some case studies

• Maize markets in Zimbabwe: a complex web of hidden activity

• Livelihoods analysis and agrarian political economy: a new podcast

• Robin Palmer – the original land campaigner and scholar activist

• Zimbabwe’s resettlement experience from 1980 to 2000

• The maize value web in Zimbabwe: new business opportunities

• Why livestock keeping can be good for the environment

• Phases of Zimbabwe’s land reform: a shifting political economy

We have had two important blog series this year, reporting on-going research across our sites – in Chikombedzi, Triangle/Hippo Valley, Wondedzo-Masvingo, Chatsworth-Gutu, Matobo and Mvurwi. Thanks to the team based in all these sites and to Felix Murimbarimba for continued coordination of the work.

The first was a popular series on ‘the hidden middle’ – the set of economic interactions that occur between production and consumption, involving transport, logistics, processing and more. A huge amount of economic activity is going on linked to maize, horticulture and poultry, the commodities that we looked at. The other, more recent series was on mechanisation – for production, processing and transport – where small-scale appropriate mechanisation is revolutionising agriculture and the wider economy. Look out for a series on ‘finance’ in the new year.

Many people read the blog and there are now over 500 posts on the site, with many visitors returning to older blogs. The search facility works well so do have a browse. In the past year, I have been asked by several people (including a journalist for a global newspaper, a diplomat and several donor officials) for information on certain themes and compiled the following list, which allows access to the archive around certain themes.

• On land reform outcomes: Zimbabwe’s land reform areas twenty years on (1): A blog series | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (series based on our data, the story of how differentiated outcomes across A1 and A2 sites emerged)
• On changing phases of land reform. Phases of Zimbabwe’s land reform: a shifting political economy | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (why the obsession with the early stages of land invasions detracts from the bigger story).
• On tenure and land administration. Beyond the freehold title obsession: generating land tenure security | zimbabweland (wordpress.com); Zimbabwe urgently needs a new land administration system | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (and why we (still) need to get away from thinking everything can be sold by titling, or even lease agreements and why a more holistic look at an integrated, district based land administration system is needed).
• On land utilisation Underutilised land in Zimbabwe: not a new problem | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (pointing out that the debate about land utilisation is far from new).
• On the compensation deal. compensation | Search Results | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (the FAQ one is probably the best one to start with for this complex and still-evolving debate)
• On medium-scale farms (A2) Medium-scale commercial farming in Zimbabwe: how has it fared since land reform? | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (on the mixed success of A2 farms and the problems they face).
• On ‘small towns’ and local economic development How land reform transformed small towns in Zimbabwe | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (and how economic linkages from land reform areas are vitally important and a key part of any assessment of impact).
• On the food economy Why is there food insecurity in Zimbabwe? | zimbabweland (wordpress.com) (why the continued narrative about food insecurity doesn’t help, and why a new look at the food economy taking account of land reform is needed).

There is much, much more of course, and a lot of this has been published formally in peer-review articles. Do download or buy our open access book compilation of articles or take a look at this list of articles we have produced over the years. For those who claim idly on Twitter/X that our work is not based on evidence and data, have a read!

So, thank you to the many readers of Zimbabweland from many different countries for informal feedback and continued readership. There have been 35 blogs this year and about 56k words of text – and lots of photos too. I hope you have enjoyed some of the posts! We hope to enter a new phase of field-based empirical work in 2024-25, exploring the experience of land reform, now over 25 years. Please look out for updates in the new year.

Zimbabwe’s election: what are the parties saying about land, agriculture and rural development?

At last one of the major parties contesting Zimbabwe’s election on August 23 has produced a manifesto – in this case the Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC), which was launched last week. ZANU-PF remain without one, claiming that they are running on their record. Other parties have produced them, including ZAPU, but two are no longer relevant, as the Douglas Mwonzora and the MDC-T dropped out and Saviour Kasukuwere was disqualified by the courts.

Right now there are ten presidential candidates, but in the end only two matter – Emerson Mnangagwa of ZANU-PF, the ruling party that has been in power for 43 years, and Nelson Chamisa, the head of the new party, the CCC, which emerged from the Movement for Democratic Change that was led for so long by the late Morgan Tsvangirai.

Rather than commenting on the endless intrigues and the faction fighting within the parties, on which you can spend days on social media if you like (and be none the wiser), for this blog I will concentrate on the substantive policies around land, agriculture and rural development that each of the parties offer. In terms of policy debate, this election has been rather disappointing to say the least, with so much airtime being taken up by many court cases contesting the validity of candidates, when candidates registered and so on. There are a lot of lawyers in the political class in Zimbabwe and electoral democracy has become highly litigious, not necessarily resulting in a better process given the state of the judicial system in the country.

Avoiding all these shenanigans and following the tradition of this blog established for the elections between 2013 and 2018 (see blogs here, here, here and here), I have had a look at the policy promises made by the two main parties.

ZANU-PF’s mixed track record

As already noted, ZANU-PF have not produced a manifesto at all, so we have to take them at their word and look at their record and assume that this is the basis on which they are contesting.

Luckily the very well respected and independent think-tank Sivio has produced one of its ‘record card’ assessments of the track record of the current government across a range of areas. In many, the record is poor – including in areas where there has been much critique, including most notably overall governance, but in agriculture Sivio gives the government a surprisingly positive grade, with 28 of 32 promises kept (although only 3 were fully implemented) and an overall mark of 74%. This is on the basis of a range of subsidy schemes, some investment in infrastructure (notably irrigation and an acceleration of dam construction) and good harvests (of course helped by good rainfall seasons recently).

So, if elected, we assume that they will stick with their current approach, encouraging external investment in the sector, including via joint ventures; subsidising key crops (such as wheat) and certain farmers (through the various schemes – the Presidential inputs support, pfumvudza, command agriculture and so on) and continuing with the (very slow) land registration process and the issuing of leases for the A2 farms. The agreement of a compensation deal for the white farmers who lost their land in the land reform is seen as a big policy achievement of the past government, and presumably we can expect this to remain a priority, with African Development Bank-led negotiations around wider government debt (now totalling $17.5 billion) potentially encompassing the huge sums ($3.5 billion) committed as part of the compensation deal.

Much of course will depend on whether a new ZANU-PF government can convince the ‘international community’ that they (this time) really do mean business, and that sanctions/restrictive measures are then reduced, debt cleared and investment then flows. There will be much scepticism given the poor track record of the government since the coup in 2017 when so much more was expected. The failures of the current government on many fronts – most notably on the economy, and so jobs – is a focus of much commentary, and it is no surprise that a large majority think that the country needs to change, even if according to Afrobarometer ZANU-PF were ahead in the polls at least a month or so ago  – presumably because the rural voters appreciate some of the ruling party’s policies and respect their local candidates who emerge through often hard-fought primary elections, while on-going scepticism about the electoral process and voter intimidation dissuade rural people from backing an alternative (at least in public).

Citizens’ change ahead?

The opposition led by Nelson Chamisa defines itself around change, and the CCC manifesto is all about rebuilding Zimbabwe – with large doses of Christianity thrown in for good measure. God is supposedly on their side and at the manifesto launch, Chamisa committed to “rededicate Zimbabwe to God”. Chamisa’s bizarre policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ confused many and resulted in much discontent internally, but the manifesto (coming very late in the campaign and held up by internal wrangling) is full of important specifics, including a five point plan and 20 actions for the first 100 days, together with lots of detail on a whole array of policy areas across 100 pages.

It replicates much that was in the MDC Alliance’s last manifesto, and indeed overlaps considerably with many of ZANU-PF’s commitments and in fact on-going projects. The photo editor may well be the same as in 2018 too, with a distinct proclivity to choose stock photos from around the world depicting a high tech modern future for Zimbabwe modelled on Spain, the US and elsewhere, with multi-lane motorways, high-speed trains, fancy medical equipment and (bizarrely) a rural landscape that looks like New England in the fall.

There is quite a lot of detail about modernising the agriculture sector, including a focus on ‘precision agriculture’, value addition, agro-processing, irrigation and so on (pp. 52-55). And even seemingly as an afterthought there is a mention of climate change and the environment (p. 95). There are also some good sections on the importance of decentralised approaches to economic development and supporting rural growth linkages through the MATURA plan (much as we have been banging on about for years). And, as with all parties, there is a declaration that the land reform is irreversible, although the CCC manifesto repeats the tired rhetoric about the ‘chaotic’ land reform destroying the sector and the inaccurate claim that the country has been in continuous food deficit. But the CCC manifesto also makes the case that there is an urgent need to focus on land governance and administration. It argues for the need to address multiple farm ownership, stop elite grabbing, corruption and patronage and so on, removing land from the political matrix of patronage and party control and towards an effective administration system. All good stuff, aligning very much with what has been argued on this blog over years.

However, as in previous manifestos, the opposition party seems obsessed with giving people freehold title to their land (this time only to resettlement areas, whereas communal areas will get transferrable permits to occupy, but also seemingly a land reorganisation separating village and field areas, with echoes of the notorious 1951 Land Husbandry Act). Maybe it’s the number of lawyers involved but, as argued on this blog many times before, this freehold title obsession may be a diversion, and will almost certainly be unimplementable.

The big question for the CCC (as with ZANU-PF) is how all these promises will be paid for and how a more stable economy will emerge given years in the doldrums, shunned by international players, let alone valued at US$100 billion. It will take more than a quick phone call to President Biden, I fear.

A modernising zeal, but with what resources?

In the end, beyond some different emphases, the positions of the current government and the opposition on land, agriculture and rural development are not hugely different. Both proclaim the need to modernise, to invest in technology, to upgrade infrastructure, pay fair prices to farmers and so on, but how this will be done with what resources remains the big question. Whoever takes over after these elections the big issue will be the mounting debt, the fragile currency and the lack of resources in the exchequer.

In the end the capacity to implement any of the policies laid out in manifestos and speeches with multiple promises will depend on the politics of reengagement with international finance either public or private. And in turn it will mean dealing with the currency situation and so inflation (presumably once again accept the de facto reality and adopting the US dollar formally), and in parallel addressing the ballooning debt obligations (now with high global interest rates), owed to the international finance institutions as well as the Chinese.

All this will be a massive challenge for any incoming administration and will not easily be solved whoever becomes president and whichever party gains the most seats in parliament. The challenges of land, agriculture and rural development will likely persist and will require more detailed policies appropriate to local needs and aligned with resource availability, rather than the grand handwaving and promises that cannot be fulfilled that we see in every election (and not just in Zimbabwe of course).

We can only hope that the election and its aftermath will remain peaceful and that an incoming government will engage with debates on the ground and with empirical research evidence and so will enlist researchers and others in trying to address the many challenging issues in Zimbabwe’s rural areas.

Catch up on Zimbabweland – top blogs so far this year

The blog is taking a break for a few weeks as holidays and book-writing deadlines beckon. But there’s plenty to catch up on if you haven’t already. Here’s a list of the ‘top 10’ most viewed posts of 2023 (so far) that have been published during the year.

1 Conversations on Zimbabwe’s land reform: “well, it’s a bit more complex than that….”

2 Livestock populations decimated by ‘January disease’ in Zimbabwe: diverse local responses

3 Negotiating ‘belonging’ in Zimbabwe’s land reform areas

4 Preparing for the next pandemic: lessons from Zimbabwe

5 The ‘hidden middle’: the transformation of agri-food systems in Africa

6 Maize markets in Zimbabwe: a complex web of hidden activity

7 Robin Palmer – the original land campaigner and scholar activist

8 Livelihoods analysis and agrarian political economy: a new podcast

9 Zimbabwe’s resettlement experience from 1980 to 2000

10 Why livestock keeping can be good for the environment

There’s of course plenty more. There have been 22 blogs published so far this year, and 490 in total since the blog started in 2011.

This year there have been a number of blog series, notably on ‘the hidden middle‘ – the array of informal economic activity associated with agricultural production – focusing on maize, poultry and horticulture. Older series, notably the ones on urban agriculture and agricultural entrepreneurs continue to attract a significant readership.

Our book compiling our pandemic blogs – Learning in a Pandemic: Reflections on COVID-19 in Rural Zimbabwe – came out at the end of last year, but continues to be of interest to many readers interested in reflecting on the pandemic experience from a rural perspective. You can buy the full-colour book on Amazon (£12.72 for a paper copy, £1.25 for a Kindle version) or download it for free in high- or low-resolution versions here and here). Check out the blog summarising the work and a couple of articles that have emerged here.

You can join over 800 subscribers to the blog by signing up on this page (to the right =>) or follow me on Twitter (or whatever it is called now) @ianscoones to keep up-to-date with our work on land, agriculture and rural development in Zimbabwe.

As regular readers will know, Zimbabweland is very much a collective enterprise, with each post including contributions from the team in Zimbabwe led by my long-term collaborator Felix Murimbarimba (we worked out that, rather amazingly, we’ve been working together for 35 years this year), even if I write and compile the blog.

We are working on two new research themes right now – the role of small-scale technologies in agriculture and new approaches to credit and finance in a challenging economy. Results will appear in blogs in due course. We are also hoping to re-start our longitudinal tracking of livelihood change across our sites in the (not so) new land reform areas that started in a number of sites in the early 2000s. In particular, we will be trying to make sense of the ‘phases of land reform’ and their consequences, both positive and negative, drawing comparisons with other experiences of land reform elsewhere in the world. And, as before, based on solid empirical data, grounded in diverse contexts, rather than wild conjecture and misleading assumptions as too often happens. Hopefully, there’ll be some more news on this by the end of the year.

I still hope to offer reflections on election manifestos and policies for land/agriculture and development in advance of the August 23 poll, but so far the Zimbabwe election seems to be almost completely content and policy-free.

Meanwhile, enjoy catching up on the blogs!

Booming horticulture markets in Zimbabwe: a growing ‘hidden middle’

Everyone seems to be growing vegetables (and fruit) these days. It is big business and the horticulture sector is generating income, jobs and secondary businesses like never before. The ‘hidden middle’ in this value web is thriving.  

In the past, the horticulture sector was divided between the large-scale commercial operations that, through the 1990s, had broken into international markets, selling vegetables and fruits to global markets in short time windows contracted by external buyers. This required high phytosanitary and labour standards, such as through the GlobalGap system. This was lucrative business, but required much skill, lots of investment and very good networks. It was therefore dominated by white, large-scale farmers.

Alongside this business-oriented horticulture was the classic backyard gardening, usually the preserve of women to provide a few veg for relish, but with little expectation of significant sales beyond a few bunches of rape or kale or some tomatoes. Development projects from the 1980s onwards invested lots in ‘women’s gardening projects’ as their favoured livelihood intervention, often on a collective basis with a big diesel pump purchased to irrigate the area. Many of these failed as the cooperatives fell apart and the pumps were too expensive to repair.

All this changed following land reform. The large-scale, commercial horticulture sector took a knock as farms were redistributed, although some have persisted and maintained their markets. Some farmers have even taken up joint ventures on A2 farms and are supplying export markets. Small-scale backyard gardening of course continues, but the big change has been the growth of horticulture farming across the country, particularly in the land reform areas. Plots range from 0.1 ha or less up to several hectares. These are intensive production areas, are usually irrigated and regularly employ multiple people, both permanently and casually.

This growth has been driven by a number of factors, most notably the increasing availability of (mostly) Chinese-built small-scale pumps. This has allowed individuals to invest in irrigated horticulture for as little as US$200, buying a small pump and some piping to get going. Many have upgraded since to larger operations, buying solar equipment to power the pumps and increasing the horsepower of the pumps. Our study of the growth of small-scale irrigation in Masvingo found that across numerous small plots a huge amount was being produced across homestead, aspiring and commercial irrigators. In 2019, one commercial irrigator was securing an income of around US$30,000 from five hectares, with input expenses of US$12,000, and was employing some 20 people. Most aspiring irrigators had more intermediate operations, using a variety of pumping systems with plot sizes averaging 0.43 hectares. Extrapolating from this sample, the total output being generated by land reform areas in the province was huge.

So the new horticulture has intensified (through irrigation), diversified and specialised (into particular crops with secure markets) and commercialised (selling across multiple markets). We have been investigating this phenomenon over the past years (see here, here, here and here) and in recent weeks the team across our sites has conducted research to update this, in particular exploring the ‘hidden middle’ – the array of business activities that have sprung up around the boom in horticultural farming (following on from the earlier blog series on this theme on maize and poultry).  

Multiple markets

These new horticultural entrepreneurs make use of many different types of markets. Our research identified the following: municipal markets (in small towns and growth points, where fees are paid to the local authority); informal bakosi bush markets (occasional markets outside towns in rural areas, often involving hundreds of traders); supermarkets (OK, Pick and Pay and so on, where producers make a link to sell regularly); hotels, restaurants and informal food sellers (where contracts are struck for regular supplies; schools, hospitals, colleges, churches (again where contracts provide a clear market, including around big church events); road-side vendors (of which there are many, who may be the producer or may buy from producers) and mobile markets (often in the back of cars or pickups) that sprung up during the pandemic to avoid the police, but have persisted.

Together these markets make up a huge demand for horticultural produce. But the demand is differentiated. The standard, regular demand for green vegetables (covo/rape), onions and tomatoes is well serviced and sometimes results in gluts due to over-supply, but there is an increasing demand for specialist vegetables – such as butternut squashes and so on. Some crops have high value in wider markets (including export) and contractors may come and make deals with producers. In our sites in Chikombedzi, for example, contracted garlic and chilli growing takes place, while in Mvurwi, linking to major production on Forrester Farm, there are contracts for peas and beans.

Business opportunities

All this activity gives rise to many business opportunities. Most are small, informal businesses, with limited capitalisation, but they all generate employment for people based particularly in small towns near the horticulture production sites. Every small town has a number of new businesses that have emerged directly as a result of linkages with the growth in farm production, particularly after land reform. This is the ‘hidden middle’ of the post-land reform rural economic scenario.

The following activities within this ‘hidden middle’ have been identified during the research (in no particular order):

Transport. Moving perishable crops to markets is essential and the investment in one tonne trucks has been massive. Sometimes farmers buy them to transport their own crops, in other cases transporters ferry crops from a number of farmers. Motorbikes, donkey carts, push carts and every other form of transport are used to ferry crops to markets and collection points in a timely way.

Borehole drilling companies and well digging. While many new horticulture farmers have made use of small dams, ponds and rivers to irrigate from, this is not always possible. Others prefer to have their valuable horticulture produce nearer the home and this means getting new water supplies. Borehole drilling companies have sprung up everywhere. They offer a simple service including a survey and some test drills using a basic rig. If water is found they can drill and install a borehole with a pump. More traditional well diggers (using spades and dynamite) are also always in demand and many, many wells have been dug since land reform to irrigate areas.

Irrigation equipment suppliers. In many towns these days agricultural supplies shop stock basic pumps and plastic piping. These range from the low-cost units that have become so popular to more powerful versions. These days, with the declining costs of solar panels, solar installations for pumping are now available at reasonable costs. A vital bit of equipment, seen gracing so many homes these days, is the JoJo water storage tank. These too are supplied by dealers in most towns.

Artisans. All this new equipment requires servicing and repair. Unlike the stranded pump in the NGO garden project, today there are lots of people who can install, fix equipment as well as service it. Electricians, builders, welders and mechanics are able to set up boreholes, pumps, tanks and so on. Such people also are always in demand for repairing or even building transport equipment, whether cars or trucks or the more traditional donkey cart or push cart. In small towns and even in rural areas, workshops exist with skilled artisans often employing a few people.

Fuel supply. With the expansion of petrol and diesel pumps, there has been growing demand for fuel to keep the pumps going. Decentralised networks of suppliers linked to urban suppliers have sprung up to supply fuel, even in the remotest rural area.

Communications technology and finance. The ubiquitous mobile phone and mobile money payments system is vital for horticultural business. Connecting to a transporter, a contractor, a supermarket or other buyer can be done quickly and efficiently, with payments following. For perishable products, time is of the essence, and the level of connectivity these days makes many things possible that weren’t in the past. Those who sell internet bundles, repair and sell phones or facilitate eco-cash payments are essential to the overall value web.

All those involved in these businesses multiply the value of horticulture for the local economy. These businesses are not formally counted in standard censuses or conventional assessments, but the value web is extensive, complex and informal – and so too often ‘hidden’.

Benefits and challenges

There are many benefits to the growth of horticulture for rural economies and livelihoods. Access to vegetables and fruits is good for health, but sales are vital for rural incomes these days. Employment generation, especially for those without land and occupied in extensive maize or cattle farming for example, is significant through the range of multipliers and linkages we see.

Horticulture is no longer the exclusive domain of women, as men have often shifted from dryland farming to horticulture given the better returns once it is intensified. Young people too are important in the sector, as without large land areas, they are able to make use of smaller patches, either subdivisions on their parents’ land reform farms or (often illegal) plots near rivers and other water sources.

Despite the clear successes, horticulture farming is not without challenges. Climate change has often driven people to take up irrigation, but declining rainfall may result in reductions in both groundwater and open water. Confused and poorly regulated water rights may mean that access to water is challenging if upstream users take it all. Competition for markets and the resulting gluts in some core commodities (notably tomatoes) can be a problem, as over-supply can result in waste. The lack of storage and processing capacities for perishable products also results in loss of income, and there are many potentials for technological and market innovation in this area. Research and development efforts traditionally have not seen much of a focus on horticulture, but varietal research on for example watermelons has seen a massive growth in production. In the same way, work on low-input, low-chemical production systems is needed to manage pests and diseases without causing water pollution and human health risks due to the excess use of pesticides.

Overall, in land reform sites, infrastructural investment is needed to improve road access, upgrade irrigation infrastructure and so on. Inherited from large-scale farms operating at a different scale, just subdividing an irrigation area rarely works, and a new infrastructural configuration is needed for the post land reform setting. As much research has shown the old-style irrigation ‘scheme’ is expensive and inefficient and is not match to the individualised, dispersed irrigated horticulture that has emerged over the past 20 years. However, without government investment and no donor support, this sort of replanning of land reform areas still hasn’t happened.

Horticultural production in Zimbabwe, particularly the small-scale, entrepreneurial form that we see across our sites – a small plot, a pump and a pipe, is often not take seriously (say compared with maize, cattle or other major commodities), but is a vital source of food, nutrition, income and employment. The wider connections across the ‘hidden middle’ add value like no other sector. It is about time that the humble vegetable got everyone’s attention, as it is a driver of development in the post-land reform era.

This is the first in a short series on the horticulture ‘hidden middle’ and follows on from blog series on maize and poultry on the same theme. Thanks are due to the team in Chikombedzi, Triangle, Masvingo, Gutu, Mvurwi and Matobo and to Felix Murimbarimba for coordinating the work and compiling the huge amount of information and many photos taken by the team, a few of which are included here. Next week, we will explore some more detailed case studies.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland