What's happening

More than 700 former commercial farmers whose land was repossessed during Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform programme are set to receive compensation this year. Around 740 are expected to benefit, with Treasury having set aside US$10 million in the 2026 National Budget for progressive payouts under the Global Compensation Deed (GCD), the 2020 agreement between government and former farm owners.

The GCD committed Zimbabwe to paying US$3.5 billion to roughly 3,500 farmers for improvements made on acquired land, such as buildings and irrigation infrastructure. It is now treated as a central pillar of the country's arrears clearance and debt resolution strategy, and international financial institutions regard steady progress on it as a benchmark for restoring Zimbabwe's access to concessional funding.

A pledge that has repeatedly missed its own pace

The original 2020 agreement set out payments running from 2021 to 2026. That schedule slipped early, and government has since turned to alternative funding sources, including revenue from Kuvimba Mining House, a diversified mining company it partly owns, and plans to raise money from international investors by floating a bond, to keep the programme moving.

That funding strain is the detail easy to overlook in headline announcements about payouts: the numbers being disbursed each year are consistently smaller than the pace the original deal implied.

A farmers' group's own scepticism

Even among those the deal is meant to benefit, confidence has been limited. Fred Mutanda, chairperson of a group representing affected farmers, told a local paper that government's lack of money meant compensation was not something farmers could count on arriving on schedule, a caution that has proven broadly accurate given the deal's history of delay.

The current numbers

As of August 2026, government had paid a combined US$40 million to BIPPA-protected farmers from the 2024 and 2025 budgets, with a further US$20 million earmarked for 2026. Those figures sit alongside, and are distinct from, the separate GCD track covering the roughly 3,500 farmers whose land was not protected by bilateral treaties.