HUMAN-wildlife conflict, flash floods, heat waves, low business and various social ills such as commercial sex work are among the challenges faced by residents in the city of Victoria Falls.
This is contained in the seasonal livelihoods programming report handed over to the city council by the World Food Programme, working with the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) Institute of Development Studies.
The report is a product of a five-day consultative process by WFP with various stakeholders in the city, Government departments, development partners, civic society, residents and others.
According to the report, tourism is the major economic activity in the resort city, supported by a growing retail, light and home industry and cross-border trading, which all provide formal and informal employment and improve livelihoods.
The aim of the exercise was to identify livelihoods, shocks and stressors, seasonality of livelihoods, vulnerability and hotspot identification so as to assist in sequencing and aligning programmes to livelihood drivers and needs and identify gaps and opportunities.
The findings showed several most common livelihoods to include curio vending, transport tours, vegetable vending, poultry production, among others, with curio vending and vegetable vending.
Victoria Falls was found to experience several shocks and stressors such as human-wildlife conflict, flash floods, heat waves, low business and various social ills that affect livelihoods activities.
Floods, drug abuse, commercial sex work can give a knock on the destination while curio vending is the city’s success story with more than 2 000 traders.
According to the report, Victoria Falls was found to have experienced an equal number of good years, 44 percent, and bad years, 44 percent, with the least being typical years, 12 percent, in the past 18 years.
“The analysis of the historical timeline trend of frequency of good and bad years gave insights that Victoria Falls City should capitalise on the many good years in planning, to make investments in preparation for the consecutive bad years; there is need to plan with a bad year in mind in order to address disaster preparedness and build resilience of Victoria Falls City residents.
“The seasonal livelihood calendar showed that Victoria Falls economy booms between April to December with high influx of tourists,” read part of the report.
Eight of the city’s 11 wards, all of them in high density suburbs, were linked to vulnerability.
“The Seasonal Livelihoods Programming (SLP) is a collaborative process which brings together communities, local authorities, Government and partners to develop a shared understanding of Victoria Falls, in order to develop context specific programmes.
“This consultative process sought to enable the urban council and the office of the District Development Coordinator to effectively co-ordinate partners and multi-sectorial programme planning and implementation of various programmes and projects in the area of their jurisdiction,” read the report.
The report was handed over to the local authority recently. The city’s Mayor Councillor Somveli Dlamini said it will be discussed by a full council for adoption and implementation.
Town Clerk Mr Ronnie Dube said the local authority will use the document in its strategic planning for the city.
“To us, it is a very positive document for planning and we are going to implement its findings to see if they can shape the future thinking of council as we include it in planning models to deal with issues,” he said.
Nust lecturer Dr Thabo Ndlovu said the consultative research was key to seasonal livelihoods to establish economic activity in the city and whether there is need for scaling programmes up or down.
“The SLP relies on data on natural shocks and food insecurity and helped identify different times people in Victoria Falls invest and find out when people require assistance. As an academic institution, we have partnership with WFP and our role is research,” he said.
Victoria Falls became a city in 2020 and has a population of 35 199. The report established that the population is categorised into four socio-economic groups; resilient, food secure, food insecure and vulnerable.
Similar researches have been done in Chinhoyi, Chiredzi and Chipinge urban areas, as well as Nkayi, Tsholotsho, Hwange, Chimanimani, Chipinge and Buhera.
The programme is aimed at identifying gaps in the formulation of future programming. – Sunday News
