Zimbabwe - cash distributions in an unstable environment
Zimbabwe continues to experience recurrent food shortages and trends over the years have shown an increase in vulnerability especially in rural areas. The country is still struggling to recover from the impacts of the El Niño induced 2018 droughts which left about 42% of the rural population in need of food assistance.
In the end of 2018 and start of 2019, the rainfall season was characterised by long dry spells, which negatively impacted crops weeding and harvesting. Consequently, up to 2,5 million people are food insecure during the peak hunger period. Negative coping mechanisms were detected amongst vulnerable families, for example selling their seed in order to cover their immediate food needs.
On top of that, there is a huge economic crisis in the country and a large parallel economy which makes prizes volatile. There is a general fear of a hyper-inflation occurring like in 2008 were bank notes of trillion of Zimbabwean dollars were issued. There is also a strong fuel shortage which makes the operation on the field rather difficult. On several occasions DRC delegates went to the field for assessments or targeting of beneficiaries with the hope but no assurance that there would be fuel in country to make it back to the capital. The political instability led to unrest in January of 2018 and the overall unstable situation means that there are some shortages of goods in stores and lack of paper money throughout the country. The IFRC and DRC is currently working on cholera response, which is another of the problems that are faced by the communities.
DRC has had a long presence in Zimbabwe and has excellent relations to the national society. The management several times expressed that the present state of the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society is due to the DRC involvement in the last two decades. DRC started in November 2018 an emergency project funded by the Ole Kirks Foundation, responding to the foreseen food shortages. The overall objective of the operation is to provide immediate food assistance for estimated 15.000 Individuals of the most vulnerable households in Binga and Kariba Districts through a multi-purpose cash assistance. This would add to the existing long-term projects focusing on nutrition and food security.
DRC decided to activate the project at an early stage, when the forecast of drought had been announced, focusing on a scenario-based contingency planning and ground monitoring. Thus, preventing losses and negative coping mechanisms and overall to reduce the amount of food-insecurity funding needed. Surge delegate on DM and cash Pablo V. Holm-Nielsen was deployed for two months to set up the project. As the project was progressing, the worst scenarios of the planning turned out to become the reality. The British and Finnish Red Cross also contributed to parts of the project.
In this challenging context, the was some successes to highlight. The targeting and selection of beneficiaries was done with a truly community-based approach. The selection criteria were presented to the communities and it was the communities themselves that selected the most vulnerable families that deserved the help, based on pre-agreed criteria. The Red Cross staff and volunteers witnessed all discussions leading up to the selection and approval of the final list, but it was the communities themselves that did the selection. This gave a larger ownership of the project and a higher degree of dignity to the community engagement.
The initial goal of the project was to achieve the first distribution of cash to the families before Christmas 2018 and continue to give the selected households an amount depending on the household size during the 4 months that the drought is expected to last. Because of the uncertainty on the local currency, the beneficiaries received US dollars in hand, which the local markets accept (and prefer) as method of payment.
The activities included a rapid market assessment, beneficiary enquiries, coordinating with stakeholders and other PNS, training of staff and volunteers, targeting and registration of all beneficiaries, assisting with the contracting of a financial service provider, setting up procedures for price monitoring and post-distribution monitoring and overcoming challenges in making the financial service provider arrive to the selected hard to reach areas. The beneficiaries showed a large degree of satisfaction with the project and the first distribution did take place before Christmas despite the operational and contextual challenges that were faced. The operation will continue until March 2019.
