A Disaster Awaits Zimbabwe

Financial Times is reporting on the horror that is Zimbabwe's economy. With inflation being reported at over 360 percent, and a possibility of real inflation being somewhere between 400 and 700 percent by this Christmas, Zimbabwe is in an economic death spiral that it will not be able to recover from without significant international aid. That aid (the foreign investment and monetary grants that can lead to economic growth) will not be forthcoming while Robert Mugabe still runs a horribly corrupt and brutal government.

Worse still, the World Food Program estimates that nearly half of all Zimbabweans will need food assistance by the beginning of next year--this in a country that twenty-five years ago was one of Africa's biggest food exporters. A lengthy drought and destructive government policies absolutely decimated Zimbabwe's farms, though.

The food problem is made more difficult by the fact that Zimbabwe's government has yet to apply for food aid--and the longer they hold out, the more difficult it will be to find willing food donors who haven't already given aid to Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, or one of the other crisis countries.

While Robert Mugabe's never-ending regime destroys what remains of Zimbabwe's farms, refuses to acknowledge the food short-fall it will soon face, and stalls in requesting food aid, a famine is brewing. There is no doubt in my mind that if enough food donors cannot be found, that Mugabe's own Shona tribe will be fed while the Ndebele will be starved--a typical African dictator's solution to both a political problem and a national food shortage.

Read the Financial Times story.
Read about Mugabe in Time.