Even before the decade-long economic crisis (1997-2008), the economy of Zimbabwe was already failing to absorb the high numbers of people, mainly youth joining the labour market, with increasingly high levels of education. Though the level of unemployment at 10.7 percent of the labour force looks comparatively modest, the challenge is that the bulk of the employed are locked in low productivity sectors of the economy, in communal agriculture and the informal sector, implying under-employment. Yet international conventions treat decent employment as a universal right.1 Part of the explanation is that Zimbabwe has not been able to resolve the dual and enclave nature of the economy inherited at independence, where the burden of creating employment lay with the formal sector, which at independence accounted for only 20 percent of the labour force (1 million persons). Data for 2010 suggests an employment level of 1.2 million, barely above that of 1980, yet the population has almost doubled. Moreover, a precondition for employment creation, sustained economic growth has been elusive, declining persistently during the decade-long crisis.