Zimbabwe is preparing a new National Poverty Reduction Strategy for 2026–2030, with the Government acknowledging the need to build a more coordinated response to poverty, inequality and vulnerability through livelihoods, public services and social protection.

The Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare says the strategy is being developed through a two-and-a-half-day workshop bringing stakeholders together to shape the country’s next five-year poverty-reduction framework.

Opening the process, Acting Chief Director for Social Development and Labour Administration Tawanda Zimhunga said the strategy must be built around the conditions experienced by ordinary Zimbabweans rather than being driven solely by policy targets.

“We must ensure that the strategy is inclusive, evidence-based, and responsive to the realities faced by our communities, for this is the only way we can fight poverty,” Zimhunga said.

The strategy is expected to coordinate interventions across health, education, rural industrialisation, human capital development, infrastructure, nutrition, digitalisation and social safety nets, with the Government targeting stronger livelihoods and greater resilience among vulnerable households.

The new strategy comes against a difficult poverty backdrop. The World Bank’s latest Poverty and Equity Brief says Zimbabwe’s extreme poverty rate rose from 23% in 2011 to 30% in 2017 and 38% in 2019, before reaching an estimated 49% at the height of the 2020 crisis. It subsequently fell to 43% in 2021 and stood at about 42% in 2022.

The World Bank’s latest country data also puts the poverty rate at the international US$3-a-day line at 49.22%, although the latest comparable underlying household data is from 2019.

More recent economic improvements have not yet translated into broad-based improvements in household incomes.

The World Bank said last week that 80% of Zimbabweans currently work in the informal sector, with median earnings of about US$130 a month, while nearly half the population remains below the international poverty line.

That creates a major test for the 2026–2030 strategy: whether poverty reduction will come primarily through expanding social assistance or through creating sufficiently productive jobs and businesses that allow households to move permanently out of poverty.

The Ministry’s emphasis on livelihoods and rural industrialisation is significant because poverty in Zimbabwe remains strongly linked to the structure of employment.

World Bank analysis has found that informality is associated with lower incomes and limited access to finance, markets, skills and social protection. Its earlier analysis of Zimbabwe found that only 12% of informal workers lived in households where at least one member received government safety-net or humanitarian assistance.

More recent World Bank analysis similarly argues that Zimbabwe’s economic recovery has not yet generated enough productive employment, with workers shifting from agriculture into low-productivity retail and informal services rather than formal manufacturing and higher-value services.

This means the new poverty strategy faces a problem bigger than income transfers. If informal workers remain trapped in low-productivity activities, social protection can cushion poverty without necessarily providing a route out of it.

The Government’s proposed focus on rural industrialisation, digitalisation, human capital and infrastructure could therefore become more important than the safety-net component if the strategy is to address the structural causes of poverty.

The World Bank says Zimbabwe’s poverty reduction has been constrained by economic volatility, low-productivity agriculture, exposure to weather shocks and limited social-assistance coverage.