ZIMBABWE will receive US$4.6 million from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) to provide food assistance to the most vulnerable rural communities.

The bailout is meant to help build long-term resilience, following the national Covid-19 lockdown that has curbed economic opportunities.

USAID COVID-19 Task Force Executive Director Jeremy Konyndyk made the announcement at a Digital Press Briefing on the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa Thursday.

“I’m proud today to share that the US is announcing an additional US$91 million of support to health, food, water, and other humanitarian requirements in 12 African countries with resources from the American Rescue Plan,” he said.

Konyndyk said this was funding going through USAID’s humanitarian office towards some of the health and secondary impacts of Covid-19 in humanitarian crises on the continent.

“So that is a piece of some of the larger work we’re doing around the wider health system strengthening and supporting vaccine readiness and a range of things like that.  But those countries were selected based on the severity of the humanitarian need in some of those crisis settings as well as where we saw some of the most concerning impacts of Covid-19 within those settings,” he said.

USAID later released a fact sheet detailing more on the funding.

communities affected by conflict and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The other African countries to receive the funding include Burkina Faso, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

USAID said since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has provided more than US$1 billion in humanitarian assistance to help millions impacted by the virus across the world.