water and sanitation above honest and responsive government. Whilst this last is not included
as an option for the most important things that the government should address, the data from
six rounds of the Afrobarometer in Zimbabwe seem to endorse the other UN findings. Since
2004, Zimbabweans see state effectiveness and service delivery as the most important issues
for the government to address, as seen in Table 1 below. This is probably an unsurprising
finding, and found for many African countries.
Table 1: Ten most important issues for the government to address (2004 to 2017)
Source[Afrobarometer surveys]
2004
Economy
Employment
Food shortage
Poverty
Health
Wages, etc.
Education
Transport
Rates and Taxes
2005
Food shortage/
Economy
Employment
Transport
Poverty
Wages, etc.
Drought
Democracy
Farming
2009
Economy
Unemployment
Education
Food shortage/
Wages, etc.
Health
Poverty
Farming
Water supply
2012
Employment
Economy
Food shortage
Wages, etc.
Poverty
Farming
Corruption
Water supply
Education
2014
Employment
Economy
Corruption
Farming/
Infrastructure
Poverty
Wages, etc.
Water supply
Education
2017
Employment
Economy
Wages, etc.
Infrastructure
Food shortage
Poverty
Corruption
Water supply
Farming
Using the Round 4 (2009) Afrobarometer data, Mattes placed Zimbabwe in the top third of 20
African countries in terms of development, community and security infrastructure, suggesting
that the Zimbabwe government was doing well comparatively in meeting citizens expectations
for service delivery (Mattes.2010). However, as Mattes points out, good service delivery does
not necessarily lead to more active citizens:
Controlling for urban-rural differences, all three types of service
infrastructure make people more positive about current government
performance in the area of service delivery. However, once we move away
from evaluations of service delivery, we find few meaningful differences. For
example, people in well serviced areas are no less (or more) likely to perceive
higher levels of government corruption. They are no more (or less) likely to
express trust in government or law enforcement institutions, or see the state
as legitimate, or say they are satisfied with the way democracy works in their
country. Finally, there is no evidence that it makes people more or less likely
to contact their leaders, or take part in political protest. (Mattes. 2019. p. 12)
Zimbabweans clearly see service delivery as key to good governance, but, given that
Zimbabweans also rank “honest and responsive government” highly in the UN MYWorld
survey, this seemed worth investigating more closely. Furthermore, did positive perceptions of
service delivery and state responsiveness (“honest and responsive government”) lead to more
active citizenship?
Methods
Since the more analytical study (Bergh, Rocha & Takeuchi. 2014) used nine questions from
the 2008 Afrobarometer surveys, we used the same nine questions from the last round of the
Afrobarometer (2017). However, this study was concerned about global measures of countries
rather than the characteristics of citizens within the various countries, using average scores of
countries. We, on the other hand, wished to understand the preferences of citizens themselves,
and used the data from the Afrobarometer Round 7 (2017).
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