Foreign aid versus support to social entrepreneurs: Reviewing the way of fighting poverty in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Despite the development interventions that have been adopted to help the countries caught in a downward spiral of impoverishment, their problems still persist. This paper focuses on the role that traditional foreign aid and the more recent bottom–up approach of supporting social entrepreneurs are playing to tackle the situation of extreme poverty in Zimbabwe. Drawing upon a narrative inquiry, 35 stories were collected to bring fresh insights regarding the realities of such interventions as they are experienced by the local people. The evidence shows the main shortcomings of the current development models and suggests that the improvement of a declining economy such as Zimbabwe would need the interaction of various factors, so that some interventions will appear significant only when the conditions of primary importance exist in the environment. Additionally, the engagement of local people seems to be a key aspect to the success of some of the support measures.

KEYWORDS:

• Southern Africa
• social entrepreneurship
• foreign aid
• poverty
• narratives

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 There is concern about speaking openly of issues that may affect political decisions in Zimbabwe. The dominant ruling party has led the country with the same president, Robert Mugabe, since its independence in 1980. Yet, an emergency situation was declared on 14 November 2017, when the army took over the city of Harare with the objective of removing the president. Such goal was peacefully achieved one week later, on 21 November; yet the new political future remains uncertain.