Zimbabwe: Harare ranked in the bottom 10 global liveability ranking

Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe has been ranked in the bottom ten tier of the Liveability Ranking released by research group, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The city was ranked 133 of 140 cities surveyed in the past 12 months.

Four other African capitals were a listed among the worst cities to live in according to the global ranking and these include: Douala (Cameroon) 132, Algiers (Algeria) 134, Lagos (Nigeria) 138, and Tripoli (Libya) ranked 139.

Although a period of relative stability in Zimbabwe has put Harare on an upward trend, the city still remains in the bottom tier of liveability.

Zimbabwe’s capital city, which has been blighted by a host of infrastructural, healthcare, social, and economic challenges has made the city undesirable, causing the city to remain firmly entrenched in the bottom tier of liveability.

The report gave Harare an overall score of 42.6, 100 being ideal and 0 intolerable.  Although this score is an improvement from the previous years’ survey scores, driven by a slow economic and political recovery, the situation remains precarious across all indicators.

Harare’s healthcare rating marginally declined from 23 in 2011 to 20.8 percent in 2015, and the score is the lowest healthcare rating of the cities surveyed.

The healthcare indicators include, availability of private healthcare, quality of private healthcare, availability of public healthcare, quality of public healthcare, availability of over-the-counter drugs and general healthcare indicators.

The city’s deteriorating healthcare reflects the country’s state of healthcare system, which has been affected by inadequate funding from the national treasury. The donor community has been supporting the country’s public health system to avert a collapse.

John Robertson, a Harare based economist has previously observed that, “people’s right to health has been compromised by the state of the economy…Health services are suffering a funding deficit because of the current economic crisis, which has worsened in the post-GNU period.”

Harare received an infrastructure score of 35.7, an indication of its deteriorating and overburdened infrastructure. The infrastructure indicators include quality of road network and public transport, quality of international links, availability of good quality housing and energy provision, quality of water provision and telecommunications.

A detailed assessment of the country’s status of infrastructure (transport, electric power, information and communication technologies) compiled by the African Development Bank (AfDB) commissioned by the government in 2011 noted, the quality of basic infrastructure, which was among the best in the region but sustained a decade-long deterioration, necessitates urgent rehabilitation. “About $40 billion will be needed to rehabilitate existing infrastructure and increase network capacity,” AfDB said.

The prevailing infrastructural constraints include erratic power and water supplies in urban areas, poor urban road rehabilitation, among others.

The government has been courting investors to address the country’s economic and infrastructural deficiencies. According to the finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, the government signed agreements, which provide securitisation framework under which projects in infrastructural and productive sectors can be funded. However, the fruits of these agreements are yet to be reaped.

The report ranked Melbourne and Vienna as the two ideal cities to live in respectively and excluded Kabul in Afghanistan and Baghdad in Iraq.