It is only a year and a half since the landslide victory of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) movement heralded the liberation of Zimbabwe from the control of the rebel minority Smith regime and its latter-day puppet Bishop Muzorewa. Hence, it is as yet very early in the life of a country reborn to expect a coherent picture of their national policies or their particular plans for education, especially when we find ourselves at such a distance from these events.

Non-Formal Education is an integrated approach to learning; it is a program designed to give youths and adults alternative approaches to formal education. The student can simultaneously realize self development and marketable skills while engaging in formal educational pursuits. Many students who have dropped out of school or have been deprived of schooling are thus offered a second chance, and through Non-Formal Education are given an opportunity to enroll in classes relevant to their needs and interests.

The Zimbabwe Conference on Reconstruction and Development (Zimcord) was held in Salisbury from March 23-27, 1981. Thirty-one nations and twenty-six international agencies pledged about $1.45 billion in economic aid to be disbursed over a three-year period beginning in July of 1981. The United States government, through the Agency for International Development, pledged $225 million. USAID has just begun to set up a mechanism for the distribution of those funds. Because of the presence of well-trained personnel and the substantial bureaucracy that has remained intact during the transition from a white- to a black-led government, USAID intends to utilize the existing decision-making structure in Salisbury as much as possible. For those interested in potential Zimbabwean projects, one of the key documents that needs to be studied is the Zimcord Conference Document. In the following discussion the main points of the document are summarized.

The Riddell report on incomes, prices, and conditions of service in Zimbabwe is a comprehensive analysis of the cost of basic necessities, salaries, and the working and living conditions of Zimbabwe’s labor force. This is a significant undertaking in a newly-liberated nation with a government committed to socialist principles. The commission was explicitly charged with examining the economic, social, and legal implications of increasing worker participation in the economy.

Major structural changes in the Zimbabwean economy to alleviate poverty and reduce income inequalities are recommended in the bold and forward-looking report of the Riddell commission of inquiry into incomes, prices, and conditions of service.

The 330-page report of the nine-member commission published here recently offers a broadly-based package of policy recommendations, including higher minimum wages, increased taxes on companies and better-paid individuals, reform of the industrial relations system, substantially more land and better credit and marketing facilities for peasant farmers, the squeezing of pay differentials, and a gradual phasing out of food subsidies.