JOHANNESBURG – Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate has risen to 94 percent in a country where more than half of the population will need food aid in February and March, UN agencies said on Thursday.

"At close of 2008, only six percent of the population was formally employed, down from 30 percent in 2003," said a report from the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Effectively, this means that less than half a million people in the country are formally employed. Zimbabwe’s population is estimated at 12 million and only 480 000 have formal jobs, down from 3.6 million in 2003.

The country’s economy has shrunk by more than 45 percent over the past five years, leaving half of the country's urban population relying on remittances from an estimated 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora, the report said.

The new data was contained in an appeal by OCHA for 35 agencies working in the country, seeking $550m to assist millions of Zimbabweans in need of food aid.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement on Thursday that it aims to assist 5.1 million people in February while a group of United States-sponsored aid organisations plans to assist 1.8 million more people in the southern African country.

"The overall total for people in need of assistance in February and March is around 7 million," the WFP said.

Once a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe is in the grip of a severe economic crisis and food shortages that President Robert Mugabe blames on poor weather and Western sanctions he says have hampered importation of fertilizers, seed, and other farming inputs.

Critics blame Zimbabwe's troubles on repression and wrong polices by Mugabe such as his land reforms that displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers leading to a massive drop in farm production.

The economic collapse has also made it difficult for aid agencies to work in Zimbabwe because of high prices for supplies, troubles in paying salaries, difficulty in accessing food for staff and fuel shortages.

With its value eroded by the world’s highest inflation of more than 231 million percent, the Zimbabwe dollar is nearly worthless and every worker, consumer or trader is increasingly shunning the currency in favour of hard cash.

"World record hyperinflation and a collapsing banking system pose major challenges to humanitarian operations, with most agencies affected by the lack of cash and inability to access foreign currency," the United Nations said in the appeal aid.

A deadly cholera outbreak that the UN says has killed nearly 3 100 people and infected 58 993 across the country – the worst death toll in Africa from an outbreak of the normally preventable disease in 15 years – has also compounded the southern African country’s humanitarian crisis.

Zimbabweans had hoped a unity government between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would help ease the political situation and allow the country to focus on tackling the economic crisis and humanitarian crisis.

But the two political foes, who signed an agreement to share power more than four months ago, are yet to implement the agreement.

Regional leaders decreed at a summit on Tuesday that a unity government should be formed next month.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said he agreed to form a government with Mugabe although his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party voiced disappointment with the deal reached at the summit.

The MDC said its final position on power sharing would be announced on Friday after a meeting of its national executive council in Harare. – ZimOnline