The Lutheran World Federation's Cattle Rehabilitation and Development Programme

As a form of introduction I will give some very crude statistics relating to the Communal Lands in order to highlight salient features of the geographical and socioeconomic environment of our target groups. The communal farmers comprise approximately 800 000 households and own 3,5 million cattle and 2 million goats and a smaller number of sheep. Each household consists of 6-7 members. The total land surface area occupied by the communal farmers is some 16,3 million hectares, and constitutes nearly half the agricultural land of Zimbabwe. Theoretically this works out at 20,3 ha per household but the population densities vary widely between, for example, parts of Mashonaland and parts of Matabeleland.

A conference paper on a church sponsored cattle rehabilitation and development programme in Zimbabwe's rural areas.