Beyond Debiasing: Gender, Power and the Governance of Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

Debates about gender and artificial intelligence (AI) usually begin with bias: hiring tools that favour men, image generators that picture nurses as women and engineers as men, facial analysis systems that fail darker-skinned women. These examples are real and important. But framing the problem mainly as "biased data" suggests a mainly technical solution: clean the data, adjust the model, and fairness will follow. This essay argues that technical interventions are necessary but insufficient. They can and do reduce discriminatory outcomes, yet the problems they address are themselves produced within institutional and economic structures. Gender inequality in AI is therefore best understood as a question of power: who designs these systems, whose lives become data, who performs the hidden labour and who captures the value, who decides where systems are deployed, and who can challenge them when they cause harm.

The essay develops this argument through a four-part framework of design, data, deployment and accountability power, with the distribution of economic value running through all four. It pays particular attention to Africa, where AI is arriving largely as an imported technology, shaped by priorities set elsewhere, and where African institutions are beginning to test whether they can hold global technology firms to account.

A framework for power in AI

The claim that AI inequality is "about power" needs a mechanism, not just a slogan. The causal chain can be stated in six steps. Existing social inequality shapes the data that is available and the assumptions designers bring to a problem. Those data and design choices shape how an AI system behaves. Someone then decides to deploy the system in a particular setting. Deployment distributes benefits and risks across different groups. Finally, whether harmed groups can contest the outcome depends on the accountability mechanisms available to them. At each step, a person or institution makes a choice, and gender inequality in outcomes can be traced to who holds that choice.

This approach draws on feminist scholarship on data and technology, which argues that analysing who holds power, and challenging how it is exercised, is the starting point for any claim to fairness (D'Ignazio and Klein, 2020). The framework used here distinguishes four forms of power. Design power determines what a system is built to do and whose experience counts as the default. Data power determines what becomes data, what is excluded and how it may be used. Deployment power determines where, on whom and for what purpose a system is used. Accountability power determines who can scrutinise, challenge and obtain remedy. The sections that follow treat each in turn.

Design power

How design choices encode gender

Machine learning systems learn from historical records, and those who design them decide which records to use and what counts as success. Amazon's experimental recruitment tool, abandoned in 2018, learned from a decade of male-dominated applications to penalise CVs containing the word "women's" (Dastin, 2018). The system did what it was designed to do: predict which applicants resembled past hires. The gendered outcome followed from a design decision to treat past hiring as the measure of merit.

Language technologies show similar patterns. Research on word embeddings found that models encoded analogies such as "man is to computer programmer as woman is to homemaker" (Bolukbasi et al., 2016), and a 2024 UNESCO study found that large language models associated women with domestic and caregiving roles far more often than men, while linking male names with careers, business and leadership (UNESCO, 2024). Because generative tools now draft job descriptions, lesson plans and policy text, their stereotypes spread quietly into institutional writing.

Facial technologies illustrate why precision about design matters. Buolamwini and Gebru's (2018) Gender Shades study tested gender classification, the task of labelling a face as male or female, and found error rates of up to 34.7 per cent for darker-skinned women compared with under 1 per cent for lighter-skinned men. A separate evaluation by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology examined face recognition, the task of matching one face to another, and found that many algorithms produced higher false match rates for women and for people of African and East Asian descent (Grother et al., 2019). These studies concern different tasks and their error rates are not directly comparable. What they share is a finding that systems designed and tested mainly on some populations perform worse for others.

Design choices can also exclude people entirely. Automated gender recognition systems typically assume two genders inferred from physical appearance. Keyes (2018) has shown that this design choice structurally erases trans and non-binary people and misgenders them wherever the technology is used for verification, access control or targeted content. The harm here is not an error in execution; it is written into the specification.

Representation without power

A common response is that more women in AI would produce fairer design. Women remain a minority of the field. A 2025 World Economic Forum and LinkedIn analysis found that although the gender gap in AI skills narrowed in almost every economy studied between 2018 and 2025, women still made up under a third of AI-skilled professionals on the platform, and held only about 12 per cent of STEM-related C-suite roles in 2024 (World Economic Forum, 2025). downtoearth

Diverse teams are more likely to notice harms that homogeneous teams overlook. But representation without decision-making authority has limits. In 2020, Timnit Gebru, co-lead of Google's Ethical AI team and co-author of Gender Shades, left the company in a dispute over a paper warning of the risks of large language models, including their tendency to encode social bias (Bender et al., 2021; Hao, 2020). Gebru has described her departure as a firing; Google characterised it as a resignation. The episode has been widely interpreted as illustrating the limits of individual researchers' influence within corporate AI governance. The stronger formulation of the representation argument is therefore that representation is necessary but insufficient unless it comes with decision-making authority, institutional accountability and control over data and deployment.

Fairness as a normative choice

Design power also includes the power to define fairness itself. Computer scientists have shown that several common mathematical definitions of fairness cannot all be satisfied at once, except in unusual circumstances (Kleinberg et al., 2016; Chouldechova, 2017). This technical result becomes a political one through four further steps. Different fairness criteria encode different values: one might prioritise equal error rates across groups, another equal accuracy of predictions. Choosing one criterion over another shifts errors, and therefore costs, from one group to another. Deciding which group should bear those costs is a normative judgement about justice. And normative judgements cannot be settled by technical optimisation alone. Whoever chooses the fairness definition is exercising power over the distribution of harm, which is why affected people, not developers alone, should take part in that choice.

Data power

Invisibility

Data power begins with who is present in the data at all. Women's lower digital participation has a direct mechanism of effect. According to GSMA's 2026 report, women in low- and middle-income countries are 12 per cent less likely than men to use mobile internet, and more than two-thirds of the 810 million women still unconnected live in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa the gap narrowed from 30 per cent in 2024 to 26 per cent in 2025, a marked improvement on 38 per cent in 2018, yet some 230 million women in the region remained unconnected (GSMA, 2026). GSMAConnecting Africa

The consequence for AI follows in sequence. Lower digital participation produces fewer observations of women's behaviour and needs. Fewer observations mean weaker representation in the datasets used to train and evaluate models. Weaker representation can make automated decisions less accurate or less relevant for women, and it makes their circumstances less visible to the policymakers and firms relying on those systems. Invisibility in the data becomes invisibility in policy.

Extraction and exposure

The obvious remedy, collecting more data about women and marginalised groups, carries its own danger. Data can be used not only to include people but to surveil and punish them. Human Rights Watch documented 45 cases of arbitrary arrest involving 40 LGBT people in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia, finding that in every arrest security forces searched people's phones, mostly by force or under threat, to collect or even fabricate evidence for prosecution (Human Rights Watch, 2023). These cases involve manual digital targeting rather than AI. They matter for this essay because they show what data about sexual orientation and gender identity can be used for in hostile legal environments. Automated profiling and content analysis would allow such targeting to operate at far greater scale, which makes it a clear risk that AI governance in the region must anticipate. Human Rights Watch

This is the central tension of data power. Invisibility excludes people from benefits; visibility without protection exposes them to harm. The goal is therefore not maximum visibility but meaningful control: women, LGBTQI+ people and marginalised communities deciding how data about them is collected, used and shared.

The labour behind the data

Data does not label itself. Investigative reporting has documented the outsourcing of data labelling and content moderation to lower-paid workers in the Global South. In Kenya, data labellers employed through an outsourcing firm were paid less than two dollars an hour to label violent and sexually abusive text so that a leading chatbot could learn to filter it (Perrigo, 2023). Kenyan content moderators working for a Meta subcontractor have since brought litigation alleging exploitative conditions and inadequate mental health support. In 2024, Meta lost its appeal against a ruling that it could be sued in Kenya, allowing a case brought by some 185 moderators from several African countries to proceed (Associated Press, 2024). ABC News

These cases reveal a value chain that runs from data collection through labelling and model development to deployment and profit. The costs, including low pay and exposure to traumatic content, fall disproportionately on workers in countries like Kenya. The value, in the form of intellectual property, cloud infrastructure and platform revenue, accrues mainly to firms headquartered elsewhere. The gender composition of this workforce and its gendered effects are poorly documented, which is itself a gap that research and regulation should address. What is clear is that a governance framework concerned with who benefits from AI cannot ignore where the labour happens and who is paid for it.

Deployment power

Algorithmic credit and the gender gap

Deployment power is the power to decide where a system is used and on whom. Digital credit in Kenya illustrates what is at stake. Mobile lending products assess applicants automatically using mobile money and phone data, promising access to credit without collateral, which could particularly benefit women who control fewer assets. The evidence so far is mixed. CGAP survey data found that 55 per cent of Kenyan digital borrowers were men, and providers reported that men borrow more often and in larger amounts (Gubbins and Totolo, 2018). A nationally representative analysis found persistently lower shares of women in the formal digital credit market, and a gender gap in total formal credit use that grew from 4.1 percentage points in 2012, before digital credit launched, to 7.8 percentage points after its introduction (Johnen et al., 2023). CGAPResearchGate

These findings do not show that credit algorithms discriminate against women directly; lower uptake may reflect differences in phone ownership, mobile money use, income and preferences. The gender gap in mobile money account ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa stood at 25 per cent in 2024 (GSMA, 2025), and models trained on mobile money data inherit that gap. The point is that deploying automated credit scoring in a setting with deep existing inequalities, without monitoring gendered outcomes, can widen the very gap it promised to close. Scoring models that rely on phone usage, transaction histories or airtime purchases may disadvantage women who share handsets or earn informally. Whether they do so in practice is an empirical question that lenders and regulators are well placed to answer, and should be required to. GSMA

State deployment

Deployment decisions are made by states as well as firms. Governments increasingly use automated and biometric systems for identity, welfare eligibility, policing and border control. Kenya's attempt to roll out a centralised biometric identity system, known as Huduma Namba, shows both the risks and a route to accountability. In October 2021 the High Court quashed the government's decision to issue Huduma cards, ruling that the state had breached the Data Protection Act by failing to conduct a data protection impact assessment, and ordered it to carry one out before processing data (Privacy International, 2021). The case was not about gender specifically. It matters because such systems determine access to services, and women, who are often less likely to hold identity documents, bear particular risks of exclusion when registration becomes a condition of access. hapakenya

Labour market effects

Deployment also reshapes work. The World Economic Forum and LinkedIn found that women were more likely to hold roles disrupted by generative AI and less likely to benefit from AI-driven career augmentation (World Economic Forum, 2025). Decisions about which tasks to automate, and whether affected workers are retrained, are deployment decisions with gendered consequences. downtoearth

Accountability power

Technology-facilitated violence

The weakest link in the chain is often accountability: the ability of harmed people to obtain redress. AI has created new tools for gender-based violence. An early analysis found that non-consensual pornography accounted for 96 per cent of the deepfake videos it identified online, and that the subjects of the pornographic deepfakes on the leading dedicated websites it examined were all women (Ajder et al., 2019). An industry report by a commercial security website later described a sharp rise in deepfake videos between 2019 and 2023, with pornography and women targets still predominant (Home Security Heroes, 2023); as grey literature, it indicates a trend rather than establishing a precise figure.

African evidence shows how weak accountability compounds these harms. Pollicy's study, drawing on 3,306 surveys, interviews and focus groups with women in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal and South Africa, found that 28 per cent of women had experienced some form of online harassment, and 40 per cent of those believed gender was a primary reason. Most incidents occurred on Facebook, yet up to 95 per cent of the women were unaware of any laws or policies protecting them against online gender-based violence (Iyer et al., 2020). Harm without known remedy is a direct expression of accountability deficits. An African Feminist Perspective: Online gender-based violence +2

Women in public life face particular exposure. A global survey found that nearly three quarters of women journalists had experienced online violence in their work (Posetti et al., 2021). This essay projects, as a risk rather than an established trend, that synthetic sexual imagery will increasingly feature in such campaigns. Technology-facilitated abuse also operates in private: research with survivors of intimate partner violence has documented how abusers exploit ordinary apps, shared accounts and location tracking (Freed et al., 2018), and AI-driven analysis of personal data could make such monitoring more powerful. For survivors facing weak cyber laws, platforms slow to act on reports in local languages, and heavy social stigma, redress can be almost unattainable.

African institutions asserting accountability

Accountability is not only absent. The Kenyan cases discussed above show African courts asserting jurisdiction over global technology firms and requiring the state to assess data protection risks before deploying biometric systems. These precedents matter for gender because accountability mechanisms, once established, can be used by women and LGBTQI+ people to challenge harmful systems. They also demonstrate that African institutions need not be passive recipients of technology governed elsewhere.

The possibilities, on different terms

None of this means AI is inherently harmful to gender equality. The question is who holds power over it. Masakhane, a grassroots network of African researchers, has built natural language processing tools for African languages through participatory, open methods that treat speakers as collaborators rather than data sources (Nekoto et al., 2020). It represents a shift from Africa as a site of data extraction to Africa as a producer of AI. Such tools matter for gender equality because in countries where women and girls face gaps in literacy and digital access, voice-based services in local languages could deliver agricultural, health and legal information to women excluded by text-heavy, English-language platforms.

AI can also analyse pay and recruitment data to reveal discrimination, process large volumes of community feedback to strengthen services, and provide confidential first contact points for survivors who cannot safely approach services in person. In each case the same conditions apply: tools designed with affected communities, built on survivor-centred and do-no-harm principles, and linked to real human services and referral pathways rather than replacing them.

Governance: four pillars

If gender inequality in AI is a problem of power, governance is the means of redistributing it. International frameworks provide a foundation. The UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (UNESCO, 2021), adopted by all member states, contains a dedicated policy area on gender. The European Union's AI Act (European Union, 2024) lists in Annex III several categories of high-risk use subject to risk management, documentation and human oversight requirements, including systems used in employment and worker management, systems that evaluate the creditworthiness of natural persons or establish their credit score, and systems that determine access to essential public and private services and benefits. The African Union's Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy (African Union, 2024) calls for AI development that is inclusive, responsible and rooted in African development priorities. Turning these commitments into practice requires action across four pillars, each corresponding to a form of power identified above.

Assessment. Governments should require gender and intersectional impact assessments for high-risk AI systems before deployment, with algorithmic testing disaggregated by sex, age, disability and other relevant characteristics, and repeated after deployment to detect drift. Results should be published. Lenders using automated credit scoring, for example, should be required to report outcomes by gender.

Accountability. Systems should be auditable by independent bodies, and affected people should have accessible complaint procedures and effective remedies. Non-consensual intimate imagery, including synthetic imagery, requires specific legal prohibition and rapid takedown obligations on platforms, with reporting channels that function in local languages. Consequential automated decisions should remain subject to meaningful human oversight.

Participation and power. Women's rights organisations, LGBTQI+ organisations, affected communities and African researchers should hold formal roles in drafting national AI strategies, setting fairness criteria for high-risk systems and overseeing public procurement, not merely consultative status after decisions are made.

Inclusion and capability. States and development partners should invest in affordable connectivity and digital skills for women and girls, in local AI research and development, and in the regulatory and procurement capacity needed to scrutinise systems supplied by foreign firms. Data protection authorities need the resources to enforce the law against foreign as well as domestic actors.

Conclusion

The central question about gender and AI is not whether the technology is biased. It frequently is, and technical work to measure and reduce that bias remains essential. The more important question is who holds power at each stage: who designs systems and defines fairness, whose lives become data and on what terms, who performs the labour and captures the value, who decides where systems are deployed, and who can challenge them when they cause harm. Technical debiasing addresses symptoms within that chain; governance, participation and accountability address its causes.

For Africa, the timing matters. Many countries are now drafting AI strategies, data protection regimes and digital public infrastructure, and the rules set in this period will shape AI for decades. Kenyan courts have already shown that global firms and national governments can be held to account. Gender equality advocates have often entered technology debates late, responding to harms after systems are entrenched. The present moment offers a chance to act earlier: to write gender analysis, budgets for inclusion and the participation of women and gender-diverse people into these frameworks from the start. If they remain positioned mainly as data sources and end users, AI risks reproducing and amplifying the inequalities it learns from. If they become co-designers, auditors and rule-makers, AI can become a tool for challenging those inequalities rather than automating them.

References

African Union (2024). Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy. Addis Ababa: African Union.

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Associated Press (2024). Facebook loses jurisdiction appeal in Kenyan court paving the way for moderators' case to proceed. AP News, September.

Bender, E.M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A. and Shmitchell, S. (2021). On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big? In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 610 to 623.

Bolukbasi, T., Chang, K.W., Zou, J., Saligrama, V. and Kalai, A. (2016). Man is to computer programmer as woman is to homemaker? Debiasing word embeddings. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 29.

Buolamwini, J. and Gebru, T. (2018). Gender shades: Intersectional accuracy disparities in commercial gender classification. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 81, pp. 77 to 91.

Chouldechova, A. (2017). Fair prediction with disparate impact: A study of bias in recidivism prediction instruments. Big Data, 5(2), pp. 153 to 163.

Dastin, J. (2018). Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women. Reuters, 10 October.

D'Ignazio, C. and Klein, L.F. (2020). Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Freed, D., Palmer, J., Minchala, D., Levy, K., Ristenpart, T. and Dell, N. (2018). "A stalker's paradise": How intimate partner abusers exploit technology. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, paper 667.

Grother, P., Ngan, M. and Hanaoka, K. (2019). Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Part 3: Demographic Effects. NISTIR 8280. Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology.

GSMA (2025). Progress in closing the mobile money gender gap has stalled: Latest evidence from Findex 2025. Mobile for Development blog, November. London: GSMA.

GSMA (2026). The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2026. London: GSMA.

Gubbins, P. and Totolo, E. (2018). Kenya's digital credit revolution five years on. CGAP blog, 15 March. Washington, DC: CGAP.

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Iyer, N., Nyamwire, B. and Nabulega, S. (2020). Alternate Realities, Alternate Internets: African Feminist Research for a Feminist Internet. Kampala: Pollicy.

Johnen, C., Parlasca, M. and Mußhoff, O. (2023). Digital credit and the gender gap in financial inclusion: Empirical evidence from Kenya. Journal of International Development. doi:10.1002/jid.3687.

Keyes, O. (2018). The misgendering machines: Trans/HCI implications of automatic gender recognition. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2(CSCW), article 88.

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Challenges faced by Social Workers in secondary setting such as hospital/ medical setting in Zimbabwe by Nothokozo

In Zimbabwe, Medical social work was introduced as a response to public health issues of disease prevention and control (Chitereka, 2012) Medical social workers are also employed in government hospitals and local authority hospitals such as Harare and Bindura Central Hospitals, coordination with the Department of Social Development\Welfare Services through the Case Management System. Social Workers in Zimbabwe working at secondary settings like hospitals have roles such as rehabilitation, counselling, conduction home visits among others. Medical social work is a sub discipline of social work that is aligned to public health, involves assessment, diagnosis and provision of social work interventions to improve the psychosocial functioning of patients and their families (Harris, 2006). Medical social work helps patients overcome the burden of treatment for both acute and chronic ailments. In light of all these, medico social workers face a plethora of challenges in the health sector, therefore this paper serves to analyze the challenges faced by social workers in secondary settings like hospitals considering lack of team work by working with interdisciplinary teams, resource constraints, high workload and case overload, challenging clients, long working hours to mention but a few. The paper is also going to proffer recommendations on how best can these challenges faced by social workers in secondary settings like hospitals be address for example through employment of more social workers in hospitals, the government of Zimbabwe to finance the health sector with 15% effectively as per the Abuja Declaration.

Medical Social Work as, a process which serves to assist the case worker in diagnosis and treatment of patient through study of the patient in his social situation and by understanding the patient and his environment(Cobat , 2010). Medical Social Work is the application of social work knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to the field of health and medicine (Thackeray, Farley and Skidmore, 1994). A Social worker is a person that is professionally trained and registered by the regulatory board of Council of Social Workers statutory Instrument 179 of 2005. 

Social Workers in secondary setting in like hospitals in Zimbabwe face a challenge of lack of team work by working with interdisciplinary teams. Social workers in Zimbabwe working in hospitals like for example Harare, Bindura hospital work with interdisciplinary teams for example doctors, nurses, case managers, and other health care professionals and lack of team work challenge they face in their field (Munyokoveri, 2019). Moreover, the major challenges associated with working in interdisciplinary teams include differing perspectives and the down looking upon the practice of social work in health settings. In terms of decision making, the organization overlooks the contribution of social workers on the ground that social workers are not medical practitioners. Differing Perspectives for example doctors and nurses are more concerned with curing the patient hence make use of the Curative Model but Social workers seeks to employ Multi Modal approach with BASIC ID (Lazarus, 1978) to effectively understand the circumstances surrounding the clients elements rather than just focusing on the Curative or Preventive aspect thus difference in techniques between social workers and the interdisciplinary team like doctors, nurses to mention but a few. Furthermore, insensitive policies are organizational challenges encountered in their field (Embriaco et.al, 2007) and (Yamatani, 2009) by social worker resulting in difference of opinion for example discharge plan, doctors and nurses may want to discharge clients like a victim of Gender Based Violence (GBV) but social workers may delay the discharge process in order to visit conduct Home Assessment of the client, offer counselling and psychosocial support as alluded by (Engel, 1966) that Medical Social Workers seeks to understand also the clients environment, family which may delay the treatment process and discharge plan. More so,   the interdisciplinary team members do not know what the Medical Social Workers role thus sometimes the roles and functions of social workers is often not appreciated and the practice often undermined. Therefore, lack of team work by working with interdisciplinary teams is also a challenge social workers face in Secondary settings like Hospitals

 Resources constraints is also a challenge faced by social workers in secondary setting like hospitals in Zimbabwe. In this respect,  resources such as financial, staffing and vehicle are some of the resource problems faced by social workers in hospitals especially government hospitals like Harare, Bindura and Bulawayo hospitals .Medical social work is a sub discipline of social work that is aligned to public health, involves assessment, diagnosis and provision of social work interventions to improve the psychosocial functioning of patients and their families (Harris, 2006) thus it requires more social work staff since there is a lot of work involved through the Case Management System in terms of assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring and evalution and also in the referral system to other helping agencies like the Department of Social Development / Social Welfare.  In this manner, (Westman and Bakker , 2008) argued lack of resources is a major component in the medical field that leads to high rates of burnout for example Medico Social Workers at Harare Hospital are poorly financed and poorly remunerated by the government of Zimbabwe. Due to the lack of resources like more social workers , financial and vehicle in the it is a challenge to help the vulnerable population, the medical social workers serve poor economic conditions, low wages and lack of opportunities, desire to gain international experience, and improved lifestyle (Tevera & Chikanda, 2009) thus lack of resources like vehicle as argued by (Mupedziswa ,2015) deters Medico Social workers from conducting home visits for clients who have been discharged for example a Child Welfare Case of a child who was sexually abused by another juvenile under Section 135 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act (Chapter 9:07) and as encoded in the Children’s Act (Chapter 5:06), social workers have a role to conduct Home Assessment to probe the circumstances surrounding the offense as well as understand the Person In the Environment as alluded by (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).  Limited resources and limited funds also affect the working of medical social services. The process of getting services is exhaustive, Follow-up of patients is very weak. Family counseling is not being practiced properly in hospitals thus constraints of resources in the health sector limits the roles of Medical Social works hence it becomes a challenge. 

High Workload and case overload is also a challenge faced by Social workers in secondary setting like hospitals in Zimbabwe. Heavy caseloads are common in the field of social work, this is especially for social workers in the field of child welfare. Social workers are often given caseloads that exceed the recommended maximum which puts substantial pressure on the worker to process their cases as quickly as possible (Yamatani, Engel, & Spjedlnes, 2009). Secondary settings like hospitals like  Wilkins and Beatrice hospitals do not have many Medico Social workers hence that one or two social workers have to attend to all clients and assess all cases thus (Harris, 2006) concurred with (Embriaco et al., 2007) that overall workload has been associated with high burnout rates.  High workload experienced by health care providers can impact not only their health and quality of working life, but also can negatively impact their patient’s safety (Carayon & Alvarado, 2007) thus due to poor staffing leading to high work over load Medico Social workers may not effectively implement their roles and function at the hospital for example offering rehabilitation to clients suffering from a mental disorder like depression. Challenges social workers encounter included for example increasing paperwork, unmanageable caseloads, and difficult clients (Whitaker et al., 2006). Social workers report that major work-related stressors included insufficient time to do their job since more clients need to be attended (Whitaker & Arrington, 2008). The quick processing of cases can negatively impact clients as social workers are unable to provide adequate time and services needed for each case. Thus high Workload and case overload is also a challenge faced by Social workers in secondary setting like hospitals in Zimbabwe.

Social workers in secondary settings in Zimbabwe like Hospital face the challenge of Challenging Clients. Social workers dealing with challenging clients is one of the major challenges they experience that lead to increases in stress, for example social workers providing mental health services (Whitaker & Arrington, 2008). Research has proven  found that social workers who work with clients that have severe and persistent mental illnesses reported feeling incompetent, which led to higher levels of burnout symptoms (Acker and Lawrence ,2009). Medical social worker values the ethical concepts of self-determination of the patients as encoded in the (National Association of Social Workers, 2017) code of ethics and  strives to ensure the right of the patient to make his/her own choice about treatment, planning, care and discharge thus due to challenging clients ethical dilemmas can also arise when dealing with difficult clients (Becker, 2003). Furthermore, (Ulrich et al., 2007) found that nearly two-thirds of social workers working in hospitals reports that they felt powerless, overwhelmed, and frustrated when there were presented with ethical issues that they could not do anything about for example the Mental Health Act (Chapter 15:12) of 1956 gives clients suffering from any mental disorder like substance abuse to refuse treatment and rehabilitation services hence this can negatively impact clients as it can lead to inadequate and unethical services to clients.

However, the writer in this segment recommends that government of Zimbabwe and Private Health sector should employ more Social workers in order to combat the challenges of high workloads and caseloads providing more time for case assessment, planning and implementation through the Case Management System.. The Government of Zimbabwe should provide more finance for the health sector in order to employ more Medico Social Workers in hospitals and reduce resource constraints thus should adhere to the Abuja Declaration that prompts funding the National Health Sector with 15% from the National Budget. 

However, the Government of Zimbabwe should restructure some health related policies like the Mental Health Act (Chapter 15:12) in order to encompass the new technological changes, address the over growing population and the universal provision of health services for all clients. Thus it enable Medico Social workers and other practitioners like psychiatrist to be able to deal with challenging clients refusing treatment. 

However, the government of Zimbabwe and private hospitals should increase Medico Social workers remuneration or salary to deal with the problem of brain drain and poor social work staffing in hospitals like Harare and Bulawayo hospital. Many professional social workers are leaving the country in search for green pastures in the United Kingdom due to the fact that social workers are poorly salaried.

This paper has successfully managed to analyze challenges faced by Social workers in hospitals. It considered, lack of team work by working with interdisciplinary teams, resource constraints, high workload and case overload, challenging clients, long working hours to mention but a few. The paper is also going to proffer recommendations on how best can these challenges faced by social workers in secondary settings like hospitals be address for example through employment of more social workers in hospitals, the government of Zimbabwe to finance the health sector with 15% effectively as per the Abuja Declaration

References 

Acker, G., & Lawrence, D. (2009). Social work and managed care. Journal of  Social Work, 9(3), 269-283. doi: 10.1177/1468017309334902 

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Experiments by nature and design. Massachusetts: Cambridge Harvard University Press

Carayon, P & Alvarado, C. J. (2007). Workload and patient safety among critical care nurses. Critical Care Nursing Clinics of North America, 19(2), 121129. doi:10.1016/j.ccell.2007.02.001 

Chitereka, C. (2012). Hospital Social work practice in Zimbabwe. Social Work in Health Care, 49:9, 769-782, DOI: 1

Munyokoveri.T., Gudyanga. D Chikwaiwa.B.K., (2019). Medical social work practice. In  Mabvurira, A. Fahrudin and E. Mtetwa (2021). Professional Social work , Past , Present, Future. National Association of Social Workers of Zimbabwe Office 83, Block 3 Makombe Government Complex  Harare Zimbabwe www.nasw.org.zw

Embriaco, N., Azoulay, E., Barrau, K., Kentish, N., Pochard, F., Loundou, A., &  Papazian, L. (2007). High level of burnout in intensivists: Prevalence and associated factors. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 175(7), 686-692. 

Embriaco, N., Papazian, L., Kentish-Barnes, N., Pochard, F., & Azoulay, E. (2007). Burnout syndrome among critical care healthcare workers. Current Opinion in Critical Care, 13(5), 482-488. doi:10.1097/MCC.0b013e3282efd28a

Tevera, D. & Chikanda, A. (2009), Migrant remittances and household survival in Zimbabwe. SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 51. SAMP. Cape Town. 

Thackeray, M.G., Farley, O.W. & Skidmore, M.A. (1994). Introduction to social work. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.

Ulrich, C., O’donnell, P., Taylor, C., Farrar, A., Danis, M., & Grady, C. (2007).  Ethical climate, ethics stress, and the job satisfaction of nurses and social  workers in the united states. Social Science & Medicine, 65(8), 1708 1719. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2007.05.050 

Westman, M. and Bakker, A.B. (2008). Crossover of burnout among health care professionals. In Halbesleben, J.R.B. (Ed.), Handbook of Stress and Burnout in Health Care. New York, NY: Nova Science.

Whitaker, T., Weismiller, T., & Clark, E. (2006). Assuring the sufficiency of a frontline workforce: A national study of licensed social workers special report: Social work services in health care settings. Executive summary. Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers. 

Yamatani, H., Engel, R., & Spjeldnes, S. (2009). Child welfare worker caseload: What's just right? Social Work, 54(4), 361-368. 

Factors behind the growing feminisation of migration in Africa

African migration has a long history. Migration from Africa has historically been a male-dominated phenomenon, but the pattern has changed significantly in recent decades. African women are leaving their countries of birth to create new lives elsewhere. Economic opportunities are primarily available in childcare, domestic and sex work. These trends should be of special interest to those in the policy-making spaces who are concerned about the wellbeing of female migrants. Migration patterns in present day Africa are still greatly influenced by historical factors such as colonialism and its creation of arbitrary borders that sought to divide ethnically linked populations into different countries. Over the past few decades there has been an overall rise in ‘feminisation’ of migration in Africa as millions of women gradually became economic beings with a responsibility to contribute financially to their families. As it stands now, nearly half (49%) of all migrant workers are women. An activity that used to be largely male dominated has become increasingly feminine. It was the norm especially in the colonial era for male labourers to leave their families behind and cross international boundaries looking for work, especially in the Southern African region where the South African mines proved to be a magnet for employment. Women are now more than ever migrating independently as a means of meeting their own economic needs rather than migrating to join a husband and family. This paper will therefore discuss the factors behind the growing feminisation of migration in Africa.

Economic pressures on the one hand, and demand factors, on the other, changed the migration opportunities of women and men, and in the process, also changed age-old norms about the spaces allowed to women and men. In Africa, for example, the traditional pattern of migration within and from the continent was ‘male-dominated, long distance and long term’, leaving women behind to assume family responsibilities and agricultural work. Shrinking job opportunities for men, however, has recently prompted increasing female migration both within and beyond national borders (Adepoju, 2004). Whereas traditional or customary migration seems to privilege men’s options, labour migration has somewhat equalised the migration motivations of women and men. Male and female migrants alike generally articulate economic reasons for migration in developing regions, migration is usually undertaken to improve the family’s economic conditions. Women’s reasons for migration, however, may be motivated by other non-economic factors. An important, though less explicit, motivation for women’s migration might also be the search for more open milieus. 

Gender-related factors, such as surveillance of daughters, or lack of socially accepted options to get out of a bad marriage, or fleeing from domestic violence, are conditions that can ‘push’ women out. In this regard, migration functions not just as an economic safety valve, but as an avenue to allow women passage into safer, more enabling environments. Gendered norms about migration not only influence individual motivations or household decisions but also state policies. Oishi (2002) has suggested that men’s migration is seen more in terms of economic criteria while policymaking regarding women’s migration is value-driven, i.e., influenced by values on women’s employment and their socio-economic status.

Movements of people from one area to another if it isn‘t caused by some natural disaster are primarily the direct result of inadequate economic and social opportunities in the country of origin and (presumably) superior opportunities in the area of immigration. Women migrate with the hope for better living conditions, to support their children, to escape political chaos etc. However, as the recent Human Development Report highlights, there exists the dynamic interaction between individual decisions and the socio-economic context in which they are taken. Impoverishment and the need to support family provide women with strong reasons for migrating. However, poverty does not always contribute to decisions and capabilities of women to migrate. It also depends on state and community settings, traditions and on family and individual circumstances (Waddington, 2003). 

Among other factors that may contribute significantly to the decision to migrate are for example, increasing labour demand on the service market in countries of destination, family obligations, unemployment, low wages, limited social and economic opportunities and the desire to expand their horizons. Women generally face more drastic decision-making and financial restrictions than do men, which can pose obstacles to freedom of movement. Yet income-earning opportunities can empower women and loosen traditional constraints on female mobility. Economic and social upheaval can also provide the impetus to leave: educated women unable to overcome employment discrimination in their own country migrate in search of an opportunity to find work that is more likely to better utilise their skills and that is better paid. Female migration is also motivated by other non-economic factors, including surveillance by communities and patriarchal traditions that limit opportunity and freedom, getting out of a bad and abusive marriage, fleeing from domestic violence, and desiring equal opportunities (Waddington, 2003).

Discrimination against certain groups of women – single mothers, unmarried women, widows or divorcees also drives many to move elsewhere. A significant number of women still migrate as wives, and therefore their migration status is tied to that of their spouses. In many countries, if domestic violence occurs, women risk losing their residence rights if they decide to leave their spouses. Women also migrate for the purpose of marriage. Arranged marriages are quite common in some cultures, especially among emigrants from the Indian subcontinent, where both men and women migrate for this purpose. For many, arranged marriages can lead to a lifelong supportive partnership, but some of them can be accurately described as forced (Waddington, 2003).

Moreover, mail-order bride businesses can act as facades for recruiting and trafficking women. Other contributory factors that are usually taken into account when considering migration are women‘s age, their power position within the family and their stage in the life cycle (whether they are leaving children behind or not), the capacity of the household to do without them, and the presence of other women able to replace them in their domestic activities. Migration processes with a female focus should be more closely scrutinised in order to prevent hidden risks and promote new opportunities for women and their families (Waddington, 2003).

 Women‘s decisions to migrate depend on many factors: labour market conditions, discrimination and exclusion, unfavourable legislation, risks, the impact on people left behind, etc. The growing desire to acquire an education and rapidly rising levels of literacy schooling across Africa has gained in importance as a driving force of mobility and migration of women. This often starts with local and intra-regional education. For instance, the absence of primary and secondary schools in rural areas is often a reason for women to migrate to towns, particularly when good transport is lacking, either by living in with family or community members already living there, or to by staying at boarding schools or other collective facilities (Haas, 2010).

Public debates and media representations of African women migration have paid extensive attention to the links between environmental degradation, climate change and migration. Climate change is often seen as one of main drivers of contemporary migration from African and other poor countries. This has frequently led to dire predictions that tens, if not hundreds of millions of ‘environmental refugees’ will get on the move (Myers 2002). Also the recent increase in unauthorized crossings of the Mediterranean has often been attributed to a combination of climate change, environmental degradation and population growth. 

Mobility deprivation also explains the complex effects of violence and political oppression on trends and patterns of migration. The recent history of African women migration exemplifies the relevance of violent conflict and political oppression in generating significant population mobility. Although the vast majority of Africans primarily for reasons of work, family, or study, even in regions known for refugee migration (Bakewell and Bonfiglio 2013) violence and political oppression plays an important role in generating refugee migration and internal displacement, particularly in regions such as the Great Lakes district, the Horn of Africa and certain areas in West Africa (such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, and parts of Nigeria) and, until the 1990s, in Southern Africa (Waddington, 2003). People may be denied basic human rights and the access to education and to a dignified life may be prevented, especially for females. Fundamentalism is such countries may easily grow, as it is the case with the deadly activities of Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria, that it is estimated to have caused the internal displacement of nearly 2 million people. It is to be noted that the majority of displaced people in warring nations are relocated within national borders, thus officially they are not considered international migrants, but rather internal refugees (Waddington, 2003).

Land grabbing is a phenomenon that has become increasingly important since the beginning of the new millennium. The term ‘land grabbing’ refers to the intensive exploitation of vast areas of land in rural areas of low-income countries by private international enterprises or even by foreign governments in order to implement large-scale intensive cultivations (mainly biofuels and food crops) or to exploit minerals, forestry or the touristic industry. This happens to the detriment of the poor local population, which is poorly (and often forcedly) compensated and virtually obliged to leave the rural areas to reach the degraded urban peripheries within their own countries, where they often live a difficult life in a different setting from the one they and their families have experienced for centuries. Psychological and physical impairment is frequent in such communities and international female migration may then occur (Adepoju, 2004).

A number of countries have a quite restrictive policy on sexual identity and LTB people (lesbians, transgender and bisexual people) face psychological and even physical violence, forcing them to hide their sexual identity. The impact of such policies on international migration has recently been the subject of some investigation that is in its infancy. No doubt, however, that an impact exists, especially from countries where ‘machismo’ is considered a value (Adepoju, 2004). The influence of the ethnic group, the family support both economic and societal is of the upmost importance for a specific individual to make the final choice to migrate or to stay. Educational level and access to financial means permitting to afford the migration travel have already been discussed above, but other factors such as ethnic and social customs are also important. The aspiration and desire to migrate by women is a crucial key factor that interacts with other external drivers of migration to build the final decision to actually migrate (Adepoju, 2004).

The majority of women migrate as workers or with their families, driven by economic necessity. The failure of states to fulfil economic, social and political human rights play a key role in pushing women to migrate. Thus, discussion of migration and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be limited to those points that explicitly mention migrants. Fulfillment of all of the SDGs is necessary to create an environment where women can choose to migrate or remain at home. The growing power of corporations to displace people and undermine livelihoods, while demanding cheap labour elsewhere, is a central factor in driving migration, including irregular migration. Women migrant workers’ role in development cannot be instrumentalized as “agents of development,” but must be seen in the complex nexus of their choices, their lack of choices, their family relationships and their ability to claim rights, including economic and social human rights (Adepoju, 2004).

The discussion above has indicated that female migration in Africa has come of age as women are forced to take a leading role in meeting the livelihood needs of their families. Over the past decades, female-headed households have become the norm and hence the pressure to cross boundaries in search of work ranging from domestic care work to prostitution has increased for many African women. Understanding the drivers of migration within the African context will help to clarify policy choices and also enable to efforts to encourage safe, orderly and regular migration while discouraging irregular and other forms of involuntary migration. The commitments outlined here demonstrate the need for states on the continent to focus on long term development efforts in line with the SDGs goals, environmental protection initiatives, and conflict resolutions efforts in order to create the necessary environment in which the rising African women migration takes place with a view to harnessing the catalytic role of migration in development. 

REFERENCES

Adepoju, A., (2003). "Continuity and changing configurations of migration to and from the Republic of South Africa" International Migration Vol. 41, No. 1.

Adepoju, A., (2004). "Review of research and data on human trafficking in Sub-Saharan Africa" Paper presented at the IOM International Expert Meeting on Improving Data and Research on Human Trafficking, Rome 27-28 May.

Adepoju, A., (2004). "Trends in international migration in and from Africa" in Massey, D. S. and J. E. Taylor (Eds). International Migration Prospects and Policies in a Global Market. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Adepoju. (2004). Changing Configurations of Migration in Africa. Accessed on http://tinyurl.com/mtkfnhk

De Jong, G. F. (2000). Expectations, Gender and norms in Migration decision making. Population Studies 54(3): 307-319.

Hania Zlotnik, (2003). “The Global Dimensions of Female Migration” in the Migration Information Source, Available from http://tinyurl.com/2bvpz8h

R. Carlota, M. Dominguez, and J. Morais. (2005). “Crossing Borders: Remittances, Gender and Development.” http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001496/index.php

Waddington. (2003). Livelihood Outcomes of Migration for Poor People. Working Paper T1. Sussex Centre for Migration Research. Accessed on http://tinyurl.com/kprrfyv

Assessment of Economic structural adjustment programs (ESAPs) on Zimbabwe

The paper argues that the economic structural adjustment programs (ESAPs), introduced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as major international financial institutions in economic globalization, have been an inappropriate public policy for Zimbabwe. These economic reforms inflate poverty, decrease the country’s capability to develop a strong diversified domestic economy, increase the exploitation of workers through deregulation accompanied by environmental degradation. ESAPs’ devastation of the poor translates into recurrences of socio-economic crises that threaten peace and social justice and is compounded by natural calamities and the relentlessness of the HIVIAIDS pandemic. Human helping professionals like social workers are left to scramble for diminishing resources to meet the basic needs of more clients with less. To a greater extent, the country did not benefit from ESAP.

ESAP resulted in the government cutting budgets in several ministries and instituted measures towards curtailing losses of parastatals (Makamure et al, 2001). The government reduced its intervention that had been aimed at the further development of the agricultural sector, while it pushed for export-oriented production (production of tradables) (Nyagura, 1998).

Although the government’s commitment to ESAP was beyond questioning, it soon became apparent that there were problems associated with the sequencing and phasing of measures, as well as the degree to which some measures could be thoroughly or comprehensively implemented within a short period. First, there was the inescapable political sensitivity of some measures such as price decontrols, reductions in social services, levying of cost recovery measures and retrenchments. Second, there was the constant need to balance the demands of competing economic groups, which continuously lobbied for conflicting policies (Nyagura, 1998). This was particularly the case in relation to the attempt to balance the interests of workers and businesses and those of the beneficiaries of the inward-looking import substitution regime with those of the newly emerging or expanding businesses benefitting from the new policies. Finally, implementing ESAP was de-established by the worst drought in Zimbabwe’s living memory which occurred in 1991/92 resulting in a plunge in agricultural output, and an increase in government expenditures for food imports and social expenditure with negative multiplier consequences for the economy. But the government did earnestly implement many of the ESAP measures. (Nyagura, 1998).

It is clear from the foregoing that two years after the inception of ESAP, living standards in Zimbabwe had declined and that the country was still mired in an economic quagmire from which there seemed to be little hope of revival. It was also clear that the emerging problems of unemployment and underemployment were not only frictional but structural and that the Social Dimensions Fund was not only inadequate, but ill-equipped to deal with the structural problems. Overall, there was no firm evidence of a move towards restructuring along the lines expected by ESAP, except for the few cases in horticulture, furniture and tourism whose economic consequences for the economy were marginal (Nyagura, 1998).

The combined effect of falling output and increasing money supply coupled with a late credit crunch and currency depreciation not only negatively affected most of the industries which had been protected by the import-substitution regime, and which were very import dependent, but it also gravely affected the living standards of all segments of the low income population in that prices of final goods and services rose phenomenally between 1989 and 1992 with the cost of food rising by 93 per cent, clothing by 62 per cent, of amenities by 50 per cent, of medical care by 44 per cent, of transportation by 94 per cent and of education by 92 percent (Nyagura, 1998).

The major effects of ESAP on the urban informal sector may be expected to have been transmitted through the following consequences of ESAP on the overall economy: (i) An increase in the cost of inputs (ii) A decrease in the availability of inputs

(iii) A decrease in household savings

(iv) A decrease in demand for urban informal sector products

(v) A substitution effect

(vi) An increase in urban

(viii) Relaxation of foreign exchange and trade restrictions

As mentioned above, some of the ESAP policies indirectly affected mobility patterns and, in most cases, negatively, as with insecure families due to labour displacement or relocation. Such policies were explicitly related to certain sectors including, labour, transport, foodstuff prices, and agriculture. As expressed in the Government’s policy document, Zimbabwe: Framework for Economic Reform (1991-95), domestic deregulation policies were designed to see that wage labour, basic commodity pricing (including food and transport), and agricultural pricing, were all determined by market forces, instead of the government meddling in such affairs.

The effects of deregulation varied with each sector. Chipika (1998) reported that the retrenchment of workers was severe, with 32,440 formal sector jobs lost by December 1995 compared to the original target of 20,000. Cuts in public transport subsidies and decontrolling of these prices saw fewer households in Harare being able to pay for transport to work (Kanji, 1995). Several men and women had trekked to work or had arranged lifts, which cost less than the bus service, and this basically affected the lower-paid workers.

Although there are no studies on the effects of these policies on the long- distance rural public transport sector, what happened in urban areas was precisely the case in rural areas. It was common to see on national television stranded passengers during major public holidays, particularly Christmas, because most urban migrants adjusted their rural visits to once a year. Public-transport operators continued to hike fares, citing high operation costs because of the devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar. In the rural areas, the removal of subsidies resulted in the prices of commodities such as seeds and fertilizers rising, dramatically (Chipika, 1998).

The overall effects were massive erosion of farmers’ incomes and increasingly poorer and insecure households (separated by long distance and facing risk of break-ups), whose major income sources, farming and migration, had run dry. Households, particularly lower-income migrant ones, had to devise strategies to deal with this critical situation. Among others, strategies included, considerations for re-migration for the retrenched, having single residence (temporarily close the rural residence) for those who still worked in urban areas, or seeking transfer to smaller urban areas closer to the migrant’s rural home (Chipika, 1998).

However, some of these strategies posed serious dilemmas for the families involved simply because they were also less workable because of structural constraints. For example, for those who wished to re-migrate or move to nearby smaller towns, they were faced with an economy infested with problems like increased unemployment and intensified de-industrialization (Tevera 1998). This was also a period when most foreign investors would prefer to start their businesses in the capital city, where infrastructure already existed.

The Government’s reversal of regulations that were initially aimed at ensuring job security obviously resulted in job losses. Government had estimated that the number of job losses in relation to the private sector was going to be around 20 000 (Government of Zimbabwe, 1991). But, Chipika (1998) reported that the retrenchment of workers was severe, with 32,440 formal sector jobs lost by December 1995 compared to the original target of 20,000. Furthermore, several researchers (e.g. Kadenge et al., 1992; Chakaodza, 1993 and Tevera, 1998) all argue that, already there was a high level of unemployment in Zimbabwe before ESAP, but the Government’s and the private sector’s retrenchments increased the unemployment rate to unprecedented proportions.

By the end of 1995, the government had removed all price controls except on a few basic foodstuffs. The implications of the removal of government price controls for the people of Zimbabwe, particularly low-income households, were several. Prices naturally rose and inflation. For instance, in May 1991, the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe reported that the average price increase stood at 47% (Sunday Mail, May 12, 1991) and between 1992-3, Chakaodza (1993:65) reported that inflation was close to 50%. According to Kadenge et al. (1992), the increase in prices implied the erosion of real incomes, given that there was no equal increase in nominal wages and/or incomes. Chakaodza (1993:65) argued that the removal of price controls increased costs on the working people. This, in turn, led to social problems like unprecedented levels of crime, begging by `street kids’, prostitution, the AIDS epidemic and drug abuse, as well as the impoverishment of significant strata of the urban and rural populations.

Tevera (1995) argued that after the removal of price controls, food prices and transport fares rose rapidly, and vulnerable groups in both urban and rural areas could not meet basic needs such as food, shelter, education and health. Kanji (1995:39) argues that the ‘increased prices of basic foods in this period directly resulted from the lifting of food subsidies and not the importation of food because of drought. Cuts in public transport subsidies and decontrolling of these prices saw fewer households in Harare being able to pay for transport to work. In rural areas, most peasant households blamed the soaring bus fares during the economic reforms for their sons’, daughters’ or spouses’ failure to pay them visits and hence, their lack of financial support, which is associated with visits by the migrants. Usually when they visit home, migrants bring remittances with them, which are mainly as groceries and cash.

Deregulation saw the removal of agricultural produce price controls, marketing monopolies by parastatals, and lifting of subsidies on crop inputs. Before the introduction of ESAP in 1991, agricultural marketing parastatals [e.g. Grain Marketing Board (GMB) and Cotton Marketing Board (CMB)] were the sole marketing channels through which producers were obliged by law to deliver their agricultural products. The implication of agricultural price decontrol was quite clear: agricultural incomes improved. But this improvement was not sustained in the long term because the removal of subsidies resulted in the prices of commodities such as seeds and fertilizers rising dramatically. Literature on the effects of individual characteristics on long-distance migration suggests that a larger proportion of men than women usually migrate for longer distances to urban centres as well as internationally to work for wages. This shows the less influence exerted by distance on males than on females (Chipika, 1998).

The economic structural adjustment reforms had been designed on the assumption that they would lead to resources shifting from non-tradable and protected import- competing to tradable and unprotected import-competing sectors (World Bank 1999). The contraction of the former would be more than compensated by an expansion of the latter. This was supposed to stimulate growth. That this did not occur to any significant degree was a clear paradox that can be easily explained by the failure of the government to adhere to the internal logic of the reforms (Bautista and Thomas, 1998). For example, fiscal stabilisation, which was required up-front, was never seriously attempted because the government found it politically difficult to reduce its expenditure levels. Exogenous factors, in particular the worst drought in living memory, which devastated the country very early in the reform process, served merely to aggravate the situation (Mumbengegwi and Mabugu, 2002). The incompatibilities in implementing the various elements of the programme undermined the credibility of the reforms and rendered them prone to policy reversals, as had occurred frequently (Dashwood, 2000). The vigorous pursuit of trade liberalisation while failing to reform the public sector and to reduce the budget deficit was an important source of the many difficulties that confronted the economy during ESAP (Nyagura, 1998). Thus, if promoting growth was the main purpose of ESAP, then it was a dismal failure.

In conclusion, this study shows that ESAP has further marginalized the Zimbabwean people more than they were ever before, by creating an environment that threatens peace and social justice. While the structural adjustment program, that was suggested by the WB and IMF and adopted by the Zimbabwean government might be good for western industrialized nations, it has created a devastating impact on HIV/AIDS and various natural calamities. Additionally some parallels have been drawn between the impact of economic policies on social welfare of the poor in Zimbabwe and the US. In both cases, there is a need to integrate social and economic development by addressing issues of human capital development and budget austerity versus consumption. There is a possibility of serious instability and unrest in Zimbabwe as a wave of political turmoil sweeps the country (Schillinger, 1998). The general impression held about Africa is filled with mythology, but realistically, there are smart African leaders, women, men, and children as anywhere in the world and the existence of very real problems with people still surviving in sub-Saharan Africa is not deniable (Toler, 1998). Progressive human service professionals are challenged to contribute to effective public policy formulation, implementation and evaluation in pursuit of economic, social and human rights.

REFERENCES

Central Statistical Office. (1998). Poverty in Zimbabwe. Harare: CSO.

Chakaodza A.M. (1993). Structural Adjustment in Zambia and Zimbabwe: Reconstructive or Destructive? Third World Pub. House (pvt) ltd, Harare

Findley, S. (1994). ‘Does drought increase migration? A study of migration from rural Mali during the 1983-1985 Drought’. International Migration Review, vol. XXVIII No.3: 543- 550.

Gwaunza, E. (1998). The Impact of Labour Migration on Family Organization in Zimbabwe pp 49-55. In Labour and Migration in Southern Africa, Edited by L. Sachikonye. Harare: SAPES Books.

Kadenge, P. (1992). ‘Zimbabwe’s Structural Adjustment Programme: The First Year Experience’, in Mwanza, A (ed.), Structural Adjustment Programmes in SADC, SAPES Books, Harare

Kanji, N. (1995). ‘Gender, Poverty and Economic Adjustment in Harare, Zimbabwe’. Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 7, No. 1:37-55 Layard, R. 2003. Lecture 3: What Would Make a Happier Society? http://cep.Ise.ac.uk/events/lectures/layard/RL050303.pdf

Standing, G. (1991). ‘Structural Adjustment and Labour Market Policies: Towards Social Adjustment?’, in Standing, G. and V. Tokman (ed.), Towards Social Adjustment: Labour Market Issues in Structural Adjustment. pp. 5-52. ILO, Geneva

Stillwell, J. 1991. Spatial Interaction Models and the Propensity to migrate over distance. In Migration Models: Macro and Micro Approaches, Edited by J. Stillwell and P. Congdon. London and New York: Belhaven Press.

Tevera, D.S. (1995), ‘Indigenisation of the Zimbabwe Economy & the Emerging Economic & Social-spatial Impacts’, Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review, vol. XII, no.2, OSSREA.

Tevera, D. S. (1998). Micro and Small-scale Enterprises in Shamva District within the Context of an Adjusting National Economy pp 253-292. In Economic Policy Reforms and Meso-Scale Rural Market Changes in Zimbabwe: The Case of Shamva District, Edited by L. Masuko. Harare: IDS. The Sunday Mail, May 2 1991, Zimpapers, Harare 

Smiling and Frowning Faces Gender Methodology ( By Tapiwa Muzadzi Gudza)

This guide is intended to instruct the user on how to conduct a Gender dialogue using the Smiling and Frowning methodology. The methodology employs basic illustration to unpack gender issues and systematically address them. According to Mayoux (2016), the use of illustrations fosters creative and lateral thinking, and complex analysis can be completed on a single page with few or no words. Gender Methodology promotes shared decision making by analyzing interpersonal relationships and mapping collective solutions.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14pIkXbZPYhLUOSdURBRPObs2ID_IcFBw/view?usp=drivesdk 

Environmental Mainstreaming Considerations (By Tapiwa Muzadzi Gudza)

One of the most important considerations for effectively mainstreaming environmental and social safeguards into climate change is ensuring that no one is left behind. The different vulnerabilities and capabilities of different groups of people, as well as how they are impacted by climate change and environmental degradation, should be considered when developing objectives and activities. Climate change programmes at least should aim to enhance the capabilities of the vulnerable groups. It is in this context stakeholder mapping and engagement should be exhaustive. 

The environmental and safe guards mainstreaming should ensure that no harm principle is considered. The health and people’s rights to clean and safe environment should be not violated. The mainstreaming should support access to information, participation and justice in environmental and climate matters. It is in this context that Environmental Impact Assessments and Strategic Environmental Assessments should be carried at the earliest stages.

The impact of environmental and social safeguards should consider gender equality and women’s empowerment. The impact of the environment and climate change on men and women and their age segmentation grouping should be identified and addressed. Women usually have a small ecological footprint hence their capacities and skills should be developed. Access and control of environmental assets should be strengthened and their participation in policy and decision making should be enhanced in environmental and climate matters.

The environmental mainstreaming should take consider building resilience to natural, biological and technological hazards.  Resilient communities will be able to bounce back when shocks and stresses strike hence limiting the impact. The mainstreaming goal should be backed by resources and funds to support resilience building interventions. 

Sustainability should be considered when mainstreaming environmental and safeguard issues in Climate change. Long-term economic, social, and environmental benefits should be ensured through planning and programming. Hence working with Government stakeholders is necessary to ensure that when programmes and projects end there will continuity.

While mainstreaming environmental and safeguard issues accountability should be considered.  There should be fluid systems to ensure that addresses potential intervention related complaints and grievances. Compliance policies should form the regulatory parameters of the mainstreaming framework. 

Abstract :Assessment of the effectiveness of food fortification interventions in Gokwe South District Zimbabwe. (By Desmond V. Matanga)

Hidden hunger-related stunting remains a nutritional problem in Gokwe regardless of the introduction of several of both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive food-based approaches. Mandatory Large Scale Food Fortification was introduced in Zimbabwe in 2016 with an effort to address hidden hunger-related stunting but the stunting rates remain still high in Gokwe South District. The study was meant to assess the extent to which large scale food fortification including bio-fortification have been contributing towards hidden hunger reduction in Gokwe South. The study used a three-pronged approach by first looking at the availability and accessibility of fortified food vehicles on the market followed by conducting a household survey focusing on coverage and utilization of fortified foods by communities in Gokwe South checking knowledge, attitude and practice. The last part of the study looked at checking compliance to fortification standards by conducting Vitamin A analysis of five samples of maize meal with fortification claim. The study revealed that there is a wide range of fortifiable food commodities on the market with a very efficient distribution system as fortified food products are readily found across the whole District. 

Under-fortification of food commodities has been noticed among most maize meal brands with fortification claim, coupled with the limited demand and knowledge of the Gokwe South community towards fortified foods. Consumption and utilization of fortified foods have the potential to increase and avert stunting in Gokwe South District as the larger part of the population has access to fortifiable food products. A robust monitoring and evaluation system needs to be established and maintained on fortified food products covering both regulatory monitoring and household monitoring. There is also the need to address drivers of basic and underlying causes of hidden hunger namely poverty and unsustainable livelihoods to ensure better performance of food fortification interventions. Multi-sectorial approaches to stunting reduction are greatly encouraged.

Project Management

Gittinger (1982) states that ‘projects are the cutting edge of development’. The importance of projects and project management should not be glossed over in development work. In trying to achieve development at their specific levels, communities, organizations, regions and nations undertake projects. This papers seeks to give an explanation of what constitute projects, secondly it will explore the characteristics of projects. Thirdly it will explain project management and lastly discuss the duties of a project manager.  

According to the Project Management Institute, a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result henceforth a project can have tangible and intangible deliverables. This definitions highlights that projects follow a specific time line and that they are time bound with specific objectives and goals. The Zimbabwe Independent (2014) cited that most projects in Zimbabwe missed set targets with government citing lack of funds for its failure to implement on time. Donors are particular about time in projects deliverables. Failure to work within agreed timelines in most projects has led donors or funders to pull out their resources or their funds. In some instances failure to adhere to the timelines makes projects costly for example the Zambezi water project aimed at supplying water permanently to Matebeleland which started in 1980 to date remains unfinished because Government does not have the cash to carry out the costly project. The failure of the projects to yield results makes it a failed project.

Similarly Prince 2 defines a projects as temporary organization with a purpose to deliver products according to an agreed business case. It is in this context that projects achieve unique products or services. The famous Tuskegee Syphilis project of (1932) which was carried by the United States government led to the development of penicillin. Though the project was racist and unethical the development of the antibiotic is still beneficial to date. Another unique project has been the development of the orange maize project to increase Vitamin A by Harvest Plus in Zambia. Bio fortified Vitamin A Orange maize has been developed to address the adverse effects of Vitamin A deficiency. The same project is being implemented in Zimbabwe under the Extension and Training for Rural Agriculture (EXTRA) Project, the Ensuring Nutrition , Transforming and Empowering Resilience in Zimbabwe (Enterprise Project) and the Increased Nutrition , Sustainable Production for Increased Resilience and Economic Growth  (INSPIRE) project

Association of Project Management  defines a project as an endeavor in which human material and financial resources are organized in a novel way to deliver a unique scope of work of given specification often within constraints of cost and time to achieve beneficial changes defined by quantitative and qualitative objectives. This definition points to a key element that characterizes projects which is budget or cost. Projects have a working budget which are adhered to ensure that the cost does not outweigh the benefits. Monitoring is then used ensure that projects do not move either outside their scope in terms of objectives as well as resources. Most projects have failed because they have failed to adhere to the budget outlines. The Shavi dam project of 2000 to supply water to the Runde rural irrigation scheme is uncompleted due to funds. The Public Works Minister in 2013 Gabbuza cited that Zimbabwe has failed to complete 400 projects resulting in material vandalism and damage  (www.AllAfrica.com). According PMBOK (2013) states that the success of a project is measured by product and project quality, timeliness, budget compliance, and degree of customer satisfaction. In this context it is evident that projects success hinges on project management.

Gittinger (1982) defines a project as an investment activity in which financial resources are expended to create capital assets that produce benefits over an extended period of time. This activity involves planning, financing, implementation and management as a unit. It is in this context projects are intended to address a particular problem or achieve an identified objective. The Improving Water Sanitation and Hygiene in Rural Areas of Zimbabwe program in Gokwe South was made up of a series of temporary projects to achieve certain objectives for example rehabilitations of boreholes and piping of Huchu area. The EXTRA program which is being implemented by a consortium of organizations such Welt Hunger Hilfe, Heifer Zimbabwe and Oxfam has carried a number of projects with specific objectives for establishment of demo plots , formation of Internal Saving and Lending Groups and Supplying of labor saving technologies.

Passenheim (2009) states that Project Management deals with tracking this process' execution, from a schedule and cost perspective. It includes functions for developing the optimal project schedule, producing a financial model of the project, scheduling and tracking of effort against plan, managing costs against budget, and reporting of status. The effectiveness and efficiency of project management ensures the success of projects to meet their objectiveness. Most failed projects are characterized by poor project management. An obscure and faulty management system leads to increased overhead costs and poor quality.

PMBOK (2013) defines project management as the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. Project management is thus accomplished through integrating project management process which are categorized in five process groups these are Initiating, Planning, Implementation, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing. Project management in short is balancing the cost, quality and time. Managing a project requires a diverse knowledge and an effective team in order to achieve project objectives. PMBOK (2013) cites that managing requires identification of requirements, addressing concerns and expectations of stakeholders, maintaining communication and managing stakeholders towards the goal.

Kerner (2009) Project management is planning, organizing, directing and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. Furthermore, project management utilizes the systems approach to management by having functional personnel (the vertical hierarchy) assigned to a specific project (horizontal hierarchy). Project management also utilize planning tool such as The Logical Framework Approach (LFA) which is a specific strategic planning methodology that can be used to prepare many different types of projects. The Logical Framework Matrix aims to present information about the project in a clear, concise, logical and systematic way (Walsch, 2000).

Newton 2015 cites that the primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the constraints on scope, time, quality and cost. Projects need to be managed to meet their objectives, which are defined in terms of expectations of time, cost, and quality. Monitoring of inputs, activities and outputs is important for the success of the project. Assumptions that were made within the project logical framework should be monitored to ascertain their effect on the achievement of the stated outputs and objectives. Work plan which indicates which activities are ongoing should be monitored. The monitoring plan should set measurable indicators of inputs, the activities and outputs to be used as milestones or performance standard for monitoring. Monitoring provides regular feedback that helps to track costs, personnel, implementation, time, organizational development and economic and financial results to compare what was planned to actual events. In addition it provides managers and major stakeholders with regular feedback. The Government of Zimbabwe flawed monitoring system of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) led to rampant misuse of funds resulting in failed projects in most constituencies. According to Chiripasi (2011) out of 210 member of parliaments who received USD50000 only 66 could account for the funds.

Project management requires competent staff for efficiency and effectiveness. A competent project manager will be able to plan and monitor, control and direct resources of the project effectively. An effective and efficient system of management will increase organizational performance and make the organization more efficient and effective through better organizational behavior principles. Project management allow organizations to lower cost of operations by accomplishing more work in less time and with fewer resources without any sacrifice in quality. In some organizations planning tools such as Gantt Charts and Critical plans are employed to ensure that similar task are accomplished simultaneously to save time and cut costs.

The project manager manage the influence, advice and involve stakeholders in the project management. PMBOK (2013) defines stakeholders as individuals, group, or organization who may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project. In the Extra project the manager has hold sensitization programs and planning workshops with stakeholders such Ministry of Local Governance, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development. Project manager ensures that stakeholders have active participation in the programme. Reports are given to stakeholders to notify them of activities carried and the impact.

B)

The Project manager is an integral part of the project.  This section will look at the duties of project manager in Welt Hunger Hilfe, EXTRA project. The project aims at reducing food insecurity, stunting, and poverty in Gokwe South. The project manager is responsible of managing a team of ten officers who work in different wards as Field officers. In addition the manager also supervises the Monitoring and Evaluation officer who is stationed at the District Office as well as the Finance and Administration Officer.  

The manager plays a supervisory role of the staff mentioned above. He ensures that the staff have submitted their work plans according to the Gantt chart and objectives of the project. The manager gets reports of the work done as well as carry routine checks and field visits to access progress of activities. The manager is also responsible of reassigning and delegating tasks where there are shortfalls so as to meet set targets. According to Passenheim (2009) a project manager not only requires a particular set of skills - how to communicate, to control and to motivate people, but also the specific knowledge about tools and techniques required to run a project successfully. It is in this case that project management hinges on the project manager competency to run the project.

The duties of a project manager are to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency flow of the project in achieving its mandated goals. The Extra project manager is responsible for controlling and allocating resources according to the budgets outlines. In some cases the manager reserves the right to make changes to budget allocation to ensure that the project is successful. The manager develops strategies to ensure that he is able to balance the scope of the project. Priority areas are emphasized in the project hence resources are allocated accordingly. The manager makes follow ups to ensure that indeed tasks have been completed with the intended and expected quality. In some cases demo plots are visited and accessed on how they have been set up and in some cases on the job appraisal of staff is done in the field. PMBOK (2013) observes that the project manager is responsible for controlling the work of producing the products, services, or results that the project was undertaken to produce.

The project manager is also responsible for requesting and hiring of competent personnel when a need arises or when there is a gap. While the recruitment is done up the Human Resource, initiation is taken by the Project manager and he is invited to interview the candidates.

The project manager reports to the Program Manager. It is in this context the project manager compiles reports that are used by the Program Manager. It is also the Extra project manager who attends feedback meetings at National level to report on the progress of the project.

In conclusion the Project manager is important in project planning. He is the center of operations in project and his ineffectiveness and incompetency can grossly affect the outcome or results of the project. Great caution needs to be taken when hiring one. His planning, monitoring, negotiation and communication skills should be up to standard as he manages the project through the project cycle.  This paper has explained the terms project and project and management and explained the duties of a project manager using the EXTRA project as an example.

Bibliography

Gittinger, JP. (1982), Economic Analysis of Agricultural Projects, Switzerland: Economic Development Institute-World Bank

Newton , P (2015) www.free-management-ebooks.com

Passenheim , O. (2009) Project Management,  Olaf Passenheim & Ventus Publishing, London.

PMBOK (2015) A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Project Management Institute, Inc., Pennsylvania

Walsch, A.  (2000) Introduction to the Logical Framework Approach (LFA) for GEF-financed Projects; German Foundation for International Development; Berlin.

 www.AllAfrica.com Accessed on 28 April 2018