Foreign Investing in Zimbabwe

The strength of a country’s economy relies on many characteristics including culture, geography, political environment, population, economic environment, economic freedom, and investment potential. Like every word works together to build a story, every characteristic helps to form either a stable or unstable economy. Zimbabwe is a country where instability can be viewed throughout all of these characteristics. The first characteristic under analysis is culture.
Zimbabwe is a very culturally diverse place both religiously and in its population. Of the estimated 11.65 million inhabitants, many different ethnic groups exist. The majority of people, 82%, are the Shona (the Shona are further broken down into subdivisions) and the next majority, 14%, are called the Ndebele. Other small racial groups exist including the Tonga, Shangaan and Venda (Lewis, n.d.). The minority white farmers were largely forced to escape Zimbabwe when the land was redistributed. English is the main language of Zimbabwe (Akbani, 2012), but indigenous languages include Shona and its dialects, Sindebele, and other tribal languages of the Bantu family of languages (Lewis, n.d.).
Traditional societies such as the Shona, Ndebele, Tonga, Shangaan and Venda, exist in Zimbabwe (Lewis, n.d.). All of these societies have their similarities. For one, the all share a similar family structure and believe that their deceased ancestors play a role in their day-to-day lives. The incorporation of ancestral roles and other indigenous beliefs with Christianity has created the primary religion in Zimbabwe (50%), a hybrid of the two beliefs. The remaining people are either Christian (25%) or strictly follow indigenous beliefs. Women are primarily responsible for gardening, cari...

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...ent Robert Mugabe’s policies led to a decline in Zimbabwean agricultural productivity and the ZWD. To compensate for the lack of food production and revenues, the government continued to print money. This hyperinflation eventually led the government to issue four rounds of currency devaluations. In 1999, the Zimbabwe dollar was pegged to the U.S. dollar. On April 1, 2006, as the second Zimbabwe dollar came into effect it was redenominated at a rate of 1000:1 and was devalued against the U.S dollar by 60%. In September of 2007 it was devalued by 92% Furthermore, in August of 2008, the Zimbabwe dollar was valued at 10 billion of the original currency (Noko, 2011, p. 344). By February of 2009, one trillion Zimbabwe dollars were worth one new Zimbabwe dollar. Finally, on April 12, 2009, the Zimbabwe dollar was no longer considered the legal tender (Noko, 2011, p. 344).