The two men are supposed to share power in a new unity government that is facing the world’s highest inflation rate, hunger and a cholera epidemic that has killed 3,400 people.

Briggs Bomba grew up in Zimbabwe and is now with Africa Action, an organization that focuses on shaping U.S. political and economic policies that affect African nations. He joins Martin Savidge to discuss the likelihood that Mugabe will actually share power, possible solutions to the cholera epidemic and the role of other African countries in improving conditions in Zimbabwe.

PBS Wide Angle interviews Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan-born professor of government at Columbia University and an expert on African Studies. Mamdani explains why he believes that the new power-sharing agreement is the best way forward. He also reflects on Mugabe’s three-decade rule, failed land reforms and the subsequent collapse of Zimbabwe’s agricultural system.

Morgan Tsvangirai will become prime minister of Zimbabwe’s unity government.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said on Friday that it will accept a power-sharing plan worked out in September and join a unity government with President Robert Mugabe. The leader of that party, Morgan Tsvangirai, will become prime minister.

The move underscores a growing sense in the region that Zimbabwe needed a political solution so it could address its growing humanitarian crisis.

Blogger “Marius Bosch” writes that the agreement might improve prospects for dealing with the country’s cholera epidemic and widespread hunger.

The “Afrodissident” blog writes that the agreement will merely allow Mugabe’s party to retain a “veneer of democratic respectability” and that the Tsvangirai’s party will not have much power.

Blogger “Denford Magora” in Zimbabwe writes that Tsvangirai’s decision to join the government is merely a “face-saving” tactic, and that the opposition party has merely hopped aboard a sinking ship, as the government has no hope of repairing Zimbabwe’s infrastructure.

Zimbabwe is also trying to deal with a paralyzed economy. This week, the United Nations said unemployment has reached 94 percent. Zimbabwe announced that it will allow transactions in other currencies, as the Zimbabwean dollar has been plagued by hyperinflation.

The economic hardship touches just about every part of life in Zimbabwe, including the crumbling education system. This week was supposed to be the start of the new school year, but teachers went on strike over pay.

Blogger “Bishop Kadenge” writes that the education strikes are hurting Zimbabwean parents, who must pay extra money to get home tutors, but that Zimbabweans as a whole are coming together and working as a community.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Sokwanele - Zimbabwe under a Creative Commons license.

Hyperinflation has plagued Zimbabwe, where $50 billion is equivalent to less than $1.25US.

The cholera crisis in Zimbabwe has now claimed more than 2,100 lives and the treatable disease has spread to neighboring countries.

Zimbabwe also has the world’s highest inflation, and released a $50 billion note on Monday that was worth only $1.25 U.S. dollars.

Shanta Devarajan is the chief economist of the Africa region at the World Bank and blogs at “Africa Can.” He shares a letter from a friend in Zimbabwe, where the lines at the bank are long and residents struggle to get clean water and power.

Letter from Zimbabwe

I received this missive from a friend:

December 11, 2008

Harare, 1.00am

It is just after midnight in Harare. I have just returned from a midnight tour of the ATMs in Harare with a cousin. There are queues of people still waiting to get their weekly cash withdrawal limit of $100,000,000,000 (US$2.50). I saw the queues this morning when I went for my first meeting at 7.45 a.m. I did not know then that I would be seeing them throughout the day. Most of the ATMs had run out of money. Rather than go home, people saved their precious place in the lines by lying down where they stood and taking a nap. Covering themselves with sacks, newspapers and whatever warming clothing they had. Those ATMs that were still paying out cash had queues of policemen and soldiers. I dared not pull out my camera then. When I did pull out my camera, it was of people too tired to care. Needless to say, picture quality from a moving car using a micro camera is not the best. This is not a normal interpretation of 24-hour banking; seven days a week.

Three hours earlier, I had gone to one of the cholera-infected areas where my aunt lives. I had not intended to stay long. It is a way out of town and I did not want her worrying about my safety getting back into the city. There was a power outage from 6 p.m. and it had taken us two hours to find a house I last visited 20 years ago as a boy. But I did ask how she was coping in Harare; and to her nephew she poured her heart out. No clean water for weeks on end, no food in the shops and constant power cuts. She drives an hour and half across the township in search of clean drinking water, which she brings back in plastic containers. When the city council water does run through the taps in the house, the water is discolored with sewer water. The shops in the neighborhood are empty of basic necessities including mealie meal. Her husband now lives at their farm in another town so that he can plant, guard and harvest the maize that they will live on next year. There are groceries in some shops in the city, but they are sold in US$ and priced beyond her means. I am glad I brought her a suitcase of groceries. Groceries that, 20 years ago, my parents once drove from Lusaka to Harare to buy when Zambia was going through similar madness in the 1980s.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ZeroOne under a Creative Commons license.

On Friday, Argentina’s farmers declared a six-day strike, demanding government action in reducing export taxes. Riots and protests over export prices, however, are not new.

Last March, thousands of farmers went on a 128-day strike when President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner raised taxes on soy and cereals to encourage farmers to sell more food at home, stabilizing domestic food prices. The export tax hike – with some taxes as high as 50 percent — was ultimately killed, sending food prices back up again.

Producers Bryan Myers and Megan Thompson and correspondent Edie Magnus report on the food crisis from the grocery aisle to the countryside in Buenos Aires.