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March 2008: "World Economic Forum has just placed Zimbabwe among the worst tourist destinations in the world, 117th out of 130 countries surveyed." BBC
Between Zambia and South Africa north and south, Botswana and Mozambique east and west. Landlocked. Slightly larger than Montana. Tropical. Capital: Harare.
Independence in 1980. The only ruler since: the leader of the independence movement, Robert Mugabe, first as Prime Minister then in 1987 as President.
Presidents elected by popular vote to six-years terms.
According to the CIA Factbook, Mugabe rigged the elections for the year 2002. The Commonwealth responded by suspending Zimbabwe, and later Mugabe removed Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.
Unicameral legislature: 150 seats. Members elected by popular vote to five-year terms.
Mugabe has announced that he will step down when his "revolution" is complete. He claims this to mean the redistribution of white-owned lands and choosing his successor.
Figures unless otherwise stated are from the CIA Factbook.
Estimated per capita GDP:
2007 $500 (Ranks 229th)
GDP annual growth rate estimated for 2007: -6.0 percent. (Ranks 217th.)
Labor force in agriculture: 66 percent (1966)
Unemployment: 80 percent for 2005, up from 70 percent in 2002.
Exports cotton, tobacco, gold, ferroalloys, textiles and clothing.
Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP: 3.8 (estimated for 2006).
Factbook: "The government of Zimbabwe faces a wide variety of difficult economic problems as it struggles with an unsustainable fiscal deficit, an overvalued exchange rate, soaring inflation, and bare shelves. Its 1998-2002 involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. Badly needed support from the IMF has been suspended because of the country's failure to meet budgetary goals. Inflation rose from an annual rate of 32% in 1998 to 133% at the end of 2004, while the exchange rate fell from 24 Zimbabwean dollars per US dollar to 6,200 in the same time period. The government's land reform program, characterized by chaos and violence, has badly damaged the commercial farming sector, the traditional source of exports and foreign exchange and the provider of 400,000 jobs."
Deaths: 21.7, down from 24.66 in 2005. Births: 27.38
Estimated for July 2008: 12.383 million. Growth rate: 0.568 percent per year.
Density estimated in 2005: 33 persons persons per square kilometer. Per square kilometer of arable land: 396 persons.
There is an increasing flow of Zimbabweans into South Africa and Botswana in search of better economic opportunities
Infant mortality estimated for 2008: 50.58, down from 67.69 (deaths before the age of one year, per 1,000 live births.
Average life expectancy estimated for 2008: 39.73, up from 36.67 years in 2005.
Living with HIV/AIDS, ages 15 to 49: 24.6 percent (2001 estimate).
Males 94.2 percent
Females 87.2 percent
Christian and part indigenous, 50 percent. Christian, 25 percent. Indigenous beliefs, 24 percent. Other, 1percent.
Ranks last, 111th, in the Economist Magazine's 2005 Quality-of-Life index.
SOURCES:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Copyright © 2008 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.