Zimbabwe

Poverty Reduction Strategies

Zimbabwe is generally characterized by rural settlements given the fact that it is still undergoing modernization and development. The fact that the country’s majority population of over 70 percent live in the rural areas makes Zimbabwe rural in nature. However, what clearly needs to be understood is what is it that defines Zimbabwe as a rural community? Contrary to Wiggins and Proctor (2001) who only argue that rural areas are “clearly recognisable” through the space where population settlement and infrastructure take only minute spots of the land, most of which is dominated by woods and forestry, fields and grasslands, water, mountain and deserts, in Zimbabwe, they are identifiable through dense settlements, poverty, underdevelopment, highly heterogeneous and squalid conditions, and repression and ...