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Zimbabwe, with its population of 14.86 million (2020), is located in southern Africa and is
bordered by South Africa to its south, Botswana to
its south-west, Zambia to its north-west and
Mozambique to its east. There is a great tragedy about Zimbabwe, and the name of that tragedy is both
Robert Mugabe and the United Kingdom who arrived there in the 1880s under the
auspices of the British South Africa Company, a company that did not respect the
land and its people, but who saw the area as a mere trading opportunity. The history of Rhodesia then Zimbabwe has been well documented elsewhere
including a declaration of independence by Ian Smith on
11th November 1965 Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) which effectively expelled it from the
international community and triggered sanctions against its
regime until peace talks concluded at Lancaster House in London
in 1979 which paved the way for a new constitution for the country
seeing saw one Robert Mugabe and his Zanu party elected to power. The
country formally gained full internationally accepted
independence on 18th April 1980 but the rise of Mugabe triggered a disastrous decline in the country's
wealth and wellbeing coupled with near universal condemnation of how the country
was run.
Traditionally, being a land locked country, Zimbabwe had a strong
agricultural sector, however, Mugabe's damaging land reform program, where
land was seized from white farmers and given to black farmers who
did not have the skills to farm their new lands, together with a
multi million dollar foray into the war in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, shattered the economy, with Zimbabwe going
broke with a reliance on food imports; food it could not afford to import given the economic collapse
and spirally hyper-inflation. In November 2017, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa became president following a military coup that saw Mugabe forced from office. Mnangagwa promised a presidential election in 2018 that he won, abeit after a close contest with Movement for Democratic Change Alliance candidate Nelson Chamisa. Mnangagwa soon consolidated his power and turned the clock back to the Mugabe days of using violence at protests and shutting down opposition.
Today Zimbabwe in 150th place out of 189 countries and
territories in 2019 when ranked in terms of life expectancy,
literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards of a
country with a life expectancy of 61.49 years (2019). The country has the
highest proportion of AIDS orphans than any other country on the
planet (overall one in five children in Zimbabwe is an orphan)
together with the highest child mortality rate, unemployment is
around 80% and 75% of the population live in extreme poverty
with many not eating from day to day. Much of this poverty is in
the south-eastern provinces of Manicaland and Masvingo, which
are among the driest and least productive areas in the country. On this page you can explore facts and information about
Zimbabwe in a series of articles and videos together with
news about Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe Profile: Volunteer in Zimbabwe
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Zimbabwe Profile: Zimbabwe History
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Zimbabwe Profile: Life in Zimbabwe
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Zimbabwe Profile: Children in Zimbabwe
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Zimbabwe Profile: Harare Profile
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Zimbabwe Profile: Harare Airport
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Zimbabwe Profile: Zimbabwe Images
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Zimbabwe Profile: Sponsor Children in Zimbabwe
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Zimbabwe Profile: Zimbabwe Map
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Zimbabwe Profile: Zimbabwe News
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