Zimbabwe’s tobacco rebounds amid worries over health, labor

By FARAI MUTSAKA
Associated Press

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe, Africa’s biggest tobacco grower, has opened its selling season for the crop amid pledges to fight deforestation and child labor in response to pressure from rights groups, environmentalists and international buyers. Tobacco is on a rebound in the southern African nation where production plummeted from a peak of 260 million kilograms in 1998 to less than 50 million kilograms a decade later following the eviction of a few thousand white farmers who accounted for the majority of growers. In recent years Zimbabwe has rapidly increased the size of its crop, regaining its spot as one of the world’s top five exporters of tobacco, exporting just over 200 million kilograms of tobacco in 2021.