Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent steps he has taken to support crop production in Zimbabwe.

The UK's £22 million investment in the multi-donor funded Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund has improved crop production for more than 250,000 people over 2015-2022. It has also strengthened farmer knowledge on climate smart agriculture, crop diversification, soil fertility management and water harvesting. The programme has learned that integrating a range of activities is most effective at building resilience, such as crop and livestock production with community financial services and strengthened links to markets. This has improved the ability of more than 1 million people to cope with the effects of climate change in Zimbabwe.

We are exploring what we can do to harness this learning and embed some of these approaches in national systems, within our reduced Official Development Assistance programme.