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Walter Muchinguri and Victor Maphosa
ACADEMICS have added their voices to growing calls for the removal of the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West.
Zimbabwe has been living under sanctions, which have brought untold suffering to its citizens for the past 19 years.

In her study titled the “Impact of Sanctions: The Human Cost on Zimbabwe” Ms Rebecca Kagura, a Development Studies student at Lupane State University said sanctions have affected all the sectors in Zimbabwe and has caused untold suffering to the generality of citizens.

“The withdrawal of the multilateral financial institutions from providing balance of payments support to Zimbabwe led to other bilateral creditors and donors also scaling down or suspending existing credit facilities to the government of Zimbabwe,” she said.

“Zimbabwean Government lost donor support amounting to approximately US$36 million annually since 2001, US$79 million in loans from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and African Development Bank, commercial loans of US$431 million and GDP reduction of US$3,4 billion.”

Ms Jessica Ncube, a psychology student at Manicaland University in her study titled; “The impact of economic sanctions on Zimbabwe: An Explorative Study” weighs in saying all the sectors of Zimbabwe were severely affected.
“Zimbabwe lost about US$4,8 billion of revenue in the manufacturing sector in 2010 and US$2,1 billion in 2015 due to failure to get lines of credit resulting in low production,” she said.