Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent estimate he has made of the number of (a) women and (b) children who require food assistance in Zimbabwe.

The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 5.2 million people currently have insufficient food consumption. Unfortunately, this data is not broken down by women and children.

Zimbabwe is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world - droughts, floods and natural disasters mean many households are food insecure. The UK is providing targeted cash transfers to more than 10,000 highly food insecure people in Southern Zimbabwe via the WFP. We are working with the Government of Zimbabwe and other partners to coordinate response efforts and to shift the focus towards long-term resilience building - this includes improving agricultural techniques and investments we are making in climate-resilient irrigation and solar power in rural communities.