The Covid-19-induced regulations have significantly impacted on migration trends in Zimbabwe with a recent study revealing that about 12% of people have moved from urban to rural areas.
The findings are from a survey conducted from August 24 to September 23, 2020 by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat), in partnership with the World Bank and Unicef.
The survey, referred to as the Rapid PICES Monitoring Telephone Survey, builds on the Poverty, Income, Consumption and Expenditure Surveys (PICES) of 2017 and 2019 and used a sample of 1 747 households in round one and 1 639 households in round two from all the 10 provinces of Zimbabwe.
Reads part of the report seen by CITE: “Since mid-March 2020, 3% of households had moved from one location to another. Of households that moved, most of them (62%) moved from one urban area to another urban area and 26% moved from one rural area to another rural area.”
The report does not highlight which provinces were highly affected.
However, a small population migrated to rural areas from urban zones.
“Only 12% migrated from urban areas to rural areas while no household moved from rural to urban areas. This means that the Covid-19 lockdown had an impact on migration trends,” reads the report.
According to the report, food insecurity in the country has worsened since 2019.
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“About 31% of rural and 18% of urban households faced severe food insecurity, while 75% of rural households and 65% of urban households faced moderate food insecurity in July.”
The share of households that were able to buy basic food items increased slightly between rounds one and two, the proportion of those that were able to buy maize meal rose from 41 to 43% with that for cooking oil rising from 41 to 46%, while that for chicken rose from 15 to 18%.
“The share trying to buy maize meal fell from 64 to 59%, cooking oil from 76 to 70%, and chicken from 67 to 56%,” says the report.
On access to health services, the report says a “slightly higher fraction was able to access treatment (86% in the second round in August-September 2020 vs 79% in the first survey round in July 2020)”. —CITE
