(Bloomberg) —
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Years of mass migration from Zimbabwe has gained fresh impetus as an economic meltdown continues unabated, further denuding the country of the scarce skills it needs to engineer a turnaround.
Census data released by neighboring South Africa this week showed the country was home to 1.01 million Zimbabwean immigrants last year, up from 672,308 at the last count in 2011 and an average annual increase of almost 31,000. Emigration data released for the first time by Zimbabwe’s statistics agency in September last year showed 908,913 of the country’s estimated 16 million nationals were living abroad, and 85% of them were in South Africa.
Those numbers are likely an undercount, with frequent migration between neighboring countries making an accurate assessment tricky and undocumented foreigners unlikely to participate in population surveys.
Once a…
