Assessments of the presidential succession in Zimbabwe have ranged from regarding it as a military-party complex operation aimed at stabilizing dominance to seeing at as the beginning of a much brighter future. Much of the discussion has been conducted without reference to structural constraints and it is the aim of this brief to sketch key aspects of demographic and economic structure.
Population growth has been accelerating since 2000-2005 and is expected to start to taper off only in 2020-2025. One reason is that fertility has been slow to decline, although the total fertility rate (the number of children born per woman) is expected to decline from 4.0 in 2010-2015 to 3.3 ten years later. Another is the expected rapid rise in life expectancy from 2005-2010 onwards. The third is an estimated and projected tapering off of emigration, starting from 2005-2010. The result is a projected increase in population from 11.3 million in 1995 to 19.6 million in 2025.
Annual per thousand |
1995-2000 |
2000-2005 |
2005-2010 |
2010-2015 |
2015-2020 |
2020-2025 |
Crude birth rate |
33,7 |
33,9 |
35,6 |
35,6 |
31,7 |
28,6 |
Crude death rate |
14,6 |
16,9 |
14,2 |
9,6 |
7,8 |
7,4 |
Migration rate |
-3,7 |
-5,6 |
-4,4 |
-3,8 |
-1,2 |
-0,9 |
Increase |
15,4 |
11,4 |
17,0 |
22,2 |
22,7 |
20,3 |
Source, United Nations, World Population Prospects, 2017 revision
Of importance, too, is the proportion of people living in urban areas. Figure 1 shows that it increased between 1998 and 2003, but declined after that for more than a decade, and is expected to remain constant between 2016 and 2022. This is an unusual pattern and it reflects in part anti-urbanization policies, notably Operation Restore Order, a large-scale campaign, starting in 2005, to forcibly clear slum areas across the country, with pressure to return to rural areas. The political motive was to weaken the opposition, whose strongholds were in the urban areas.
The following are salient economic features.
Expansionary fiscal policy has overheated the Zimbabwean economy, given its constraints. The required fiscal adjustment is large and implies considerable downward pressure on real wage rates in the public service. Both structural reform and access to greater external finance will take time to achieve, so it is not surprising that the IMF projects a drop in real GDP per capita over the next few years. The incoming administration inherits a greater economic mess than has been usual during the decade so far, and it is likely not to be able to deal with it adequately.
Charles Simkins
Head of Research
charles@hsf.org.za
[1] International Monetary Fund, Zimbabwe 2017 Article IV Consultation, Debt Sustainability Analysis