Zimbabwe Migration

Zimbabwe is not very well known for its migration. However, the flow in and out of Nigeria is fairly great for the size of its population. In 2010, a total of approximately 1,200 people immigrated to Zimbabwe, while more than 2,700,000 people emigrated from the country. There aren’t much statistics for internal migration within the country itself, but a way to help internal migration is to improve the infrastructure and standards of living at major growth points in order to help the growth of the economic opportunities. While a majority of voluntary migrations happen due to poor standards of living, there are a few select cases of forced migration due to asylum policies. Furthermore, the push factors of Zimbabwe such as economy, poverty, education and the infringement of basic human rights, heavily outweigh the pull factors. As of 2009, the unemployment rate of Zimbabwe is approximately 95% and various political issues have dramatically reduced the value of the Zimbabwe dollar which affects its national economy. Furthermore, nearly 70% of the Zimbabwe habitants are below the poverty line and thousands of individuals are malnourished. This isn’t only it. Zimbabwe has strict regulations on human rights and the general level of education has been decreasing since the past 20 years which prevents growth for its people. Due to these factors, many individuals migrate to its neighboring country, South Africa. Unlike Zimbabwe, South Africa has a growing economy and pulls many Zimbabweans into its country for its jobs. Other reasons, Zimbabweans decide to flee the nation include all of its political corruption. Elections are linked to being corrupted as many newspaper companies are shut down if they are not aligned with the elected party and opposing party members are arrested. Because of this, elections and politics have been marked by intimidation and political violence. Not many people try to enter Zimbabwean politics due to this problem and this allows for the widespread of violations of human rights.

As a Senior Advisor to the Zimbabwean Government, I propose that we make dramatic changes to how the country is run in order to fix and better the migration issues we currently face. As one country’s economy is mainly based of its people, if more and more Zimbabweans continue to exit the country, there will be no way to help our suffering economy and improve ourselves as a developing country. Migration is a major issue as the standards of living are held below average causing the want for leaving the nation. We must adopt and make new policies that will help keep our citizens as well as bring in more people into our country. One suggestion I have to keep people from emigrating is to tax those citizens who decide to leave the country. We would use that money to rebuild and better our current economy. Hopefully with the improvements, those who left the nation will want to come back to a better nation. I’d like to especially focus on fixing the education in Zimbabwe. With a better education system, more of