Zim making progress, but slipping on poverty, hunger, access to medical care

ANEW Afrobarometer Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) scorecard for Zimbabwe shows progress on climate action as well as access to education and electricity.

The Afrobarometer SDG scorecard, which provides citizens’ assessments of Zimbabwe’s progress over a recent five-year period on important aspects of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, also reveals that the country is doing better on gender equality in technology use and on reducing the gender gap in employment, although the overall unemployment rate has remained unchanged.

But Zimbabwe is slipping on poverty, hunger, and access to medical care and clean water.

Trust in State institutions has declined, perceived corruption among these institutions has remained unchanged, and payment of bribes for public services has worsened.

The newly-developed Afrobarometer SDG scorecards highlight citizens’ experiences and evaluations of their country’s performance on democracy and governance, poverty, health, education, energy supply, water and sanitation, inequality, gender equity, and other priorities reflected in 12 of the 17 SDGs.

These citizen assessments can be compared to official UN tracking indicators.

They present both summary assessments for each SDG — via blue, green, yellow, and red “stoplights” — as well as the data behind these assessments.

Afrobarometer, an independent pan-African survey research network, released scorecards for Zimbabwe and six other southern African countries as part of a series of regional webinars focusing on progress toward the SDGs in Africa.

Speaking at the webinar, Dominique Dryding, Afrobarometer project manager for southern Africa, said the Afrobarometer SDG scorecards provide an additional perspective — one that is usually missing from other sources — that can be compared and contrasted with other indicators and thus enrich the discussion, help identify gaps, and support action to move forward in each country.

“The Afrobarometer SDG scorecards can be used as a complement to existing SDG trackers, by providing the people’s assessment of progress towards achieving the SDGs,” she said.

All scorecards can be accessed on the Afrobarometer website’s SDG scorecards page.

Afrobarometer surveys Afrobarometer is a non-partisan African survey research network that provides reliable data on citizens’ experiences and evaluations of democracy, governance, and quality of life.

Eight rounds of surveys have been completed in up to 39 countries since 1999. Round 8 surveys (2019/2021) cover 34 countries.

Afrobarometer’s national partners in all regions of Africa conduct face-to-face interviews in the language of the respondent’s choice.

In the most recent survey in Zimbabwe, the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) interviewed a nationally representative, random, stratified probability sample of 1 200 adult Zimbabweans in April 2021.

A sample of this size yields country-level results with a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

Mass Public Opinion Institute