Zimbabwe \u200bwill return 67 farms seized from foreigners from four European countries covered \u200cby bilateral investment pacts, the country’s agriculture minister said, as it seeks to mend ties with Western countries while it battles for debt relief.<\/p>\n
The southern African country started seizing white-owned farms under its late \u200bleader Robert Mugabe in 2000, in a move the government said at the \u200btime was meant to resettle landless Black people and redress colonial-era \u2060land ownership imbalances.<\/p>\n
The seizures wrecked commercial agriculture, precipitated a currency collapse in 2008 and \u200bleft Zimbabwe struggling to feed itself.<\/p>\n
Mugabe’s successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa has sought to improve ties \u200bwith Western governments, which imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe over the land seizures and allegations of broader human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
The land restitution drive is part of its efforts to secure debt relief, having been shut \u200bout of the global financial system for more than two decades after defaulting on \u200bdebt owed to international lenders.<\/p>\n
Its foreign debt stood at $13.6 billion in September 2025, with $7.7 billion of that \u200cin \u2060arrears. International lenders have demanded reforms, including resolving land-related disputes as conditions for debt relief.<\/p>\n
Agriculture minister Anxious Masuka told lawmakers on Wednesday that the government would give the 67 farms back to nationals from Denmark, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands as they were covered \u200bby the bilateral investment \u200bprotection agreements.<\/p>\n
“We are in \u2060the process of returning those to them,” Masuka said in response to a question by a lawmaker.<\/p>\n
The European countries are part of \u200bthe group of Western countries discussing debt relief with Zimbabwe and \u200bare also \u2060significant donors to the country.<\/p>\n
The International Monetary Fund approved a 10-month\u00a0staff monitored programme\u00a0for Zimbabwe, as the country seeks to build a track record of economic reforms. The programme does \u2060not entail \u200bfunding.<\/p>\n
Mnangagwa, a long-time ally of Mugabe who replaced \u200bhis mentor in a 2017 coup, agreed a $3.5 billion compensation deal with about 4,000 white farmers in 2020, but \u200bhis cash-strapped government has struggled to make significant payments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwe \u200bwill return 67 farms seized from foreigners from four European countries covered \u200cby bilateral investment pacts, the country’s agriculture minister said, as it seeks to mend ties with Western countries while it battles for debt relief. The southern African country started seizing white-owned farms under its late \u200bleader Robert Mugabe in 2000, in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,30],"tags":[58,76],"class_list":["post-20816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-southern-africa","tag-robert-mugabe","tag-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20817,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20816\/revisions\/20817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}