THE sudden withdrawal of United States aid has exposed a harsh reality: Zimbabwe’s health sector stands on the brink of collapse.
For decades, foreign donors have cushioned our failures.
They have stocked our clinics, fed our hungry and plugged holes in our budgets.
Now, with that support fading, the truth is unavoidable: Zimbabwe is addicted to aid — and it is killing us.
The Association of Healthcare Funders of Zimbabwe (AHFoZ) has already raised alarm.
Medical aid penetration remains abysmally low, especially in a country where the formal sector has collapsed and most citizens hustle in the informal economy.
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Attempts to create products that suit this majority have flopped because of high default rates and low incomes.
In plain terms, millions of Zimbabweans simply cannot afford healthcare.
But this crisis is not just about poverty. It is about politics.
For years, Zimbabwe has leaned on aid instead of putting order in its own house.
Why reform tax systems, restructure State enterprises or invest in health infrastructure when Washington or Brussels will pick up the tab?
Why mobilise local resources when donors can foot the bill?
This dependency is not neutral — it erodes sovereignty.
It makes our leaders more accountable to foreign capitals than to the people in Checheche, Dotito or Gokwe.
It breeds corruption, as the politically-connected elite captures donor funds while ordinary citizens remain trapped in cycles of hunger, disease and despair.
Even worse, it nurtures complacency.
Aid has become the excuse for government neglect.
Ministries sign glossy agreements with donors, but clinics remain without medicine, schools without books and communities without clean water.
When the donor leaves, the projects collapse — and the people are left with nothing.
Let us be blunt: this is betrayal.
Zimbabwe does not lack resources.
It lacks the political will to harness them.
We have fertile soils, vast mineral wealth and an entrepreneurial spirit that survives even in economic chaos.
Yet instead of building on these strengths, we have chosen the laziness of dependency.
Aid can save lives in emergencies.
It can feed a village during a drought or supply medicines in a cholera outbreak.
But aid cannot build a nation.
Only citizens, empowered and self-reliant, can do that.
Zimbabwe must stop treating aid as a permanent solution. It is not.
It is a crutch — and crutch eventually breaks.
If our leaders do not wean the nation off dependency, then when the aid finally dries up, the collapse will be fatal.
The way forward is clear.
Government must tax mining revenue transparently and channel the proceeds to health.
It must reform medical aid to make it affordable for the informal sector.
It must cut waste, close leakages and invest in local capacity so that no clinic waits for a donor to deliver medicine.
And above all, it must put citizens at the centre of accountability — not foreign donors.
Development will never come from donors.
It must come from us — or it will never come at all.