Coping with drug and substance abuse among the university youth in Zimbabwe: Towards a ‘quad-helix’ model

Abstract

The emergence of drug and substance abuse (DSA) among the youth has long become a global‘panic’ but has continued to attract fervent interest and attention from both scholarship anddevelopment practice. Although extant literature shows how the Zimbabwe governmentand non-state actors have over the years attempted to disrupt the drug and substancesupply, and demand chains, the scourge has remained a recalcitrant challenge. The failure tocomprehensively deal with the issue potentially undermines the United Nations SustainableDevelopment Goals in particular SDG3 and also the country’s vision of attaining the statusof a ‘middle – income economy’ by the year 2030. It also threatens the ZANU(PF) party-ledadministration’s mantra of ‘inclusive’ development, given that the youth who are the expecteddrivers of the country’s future are at the centre of the problem. This article acknowledges themulti-faceted and layered nature of the phenomenon. In light of this, it draws inspiration froma multi-sectoral development philosophy and deploys Flora and Flora’s ‘Community CapitalsFramework’ to analyse the factors influencing DSA among the youth, particularly universitystudents and delineate possible ways of addressing the challenge. With a particular focuson the youth in Zimbabwean universities and colleges, the research on which the article isbased followed a qualitative approach, predicated on a combination of documentary surveyof print and digital evidence, and snippets of ethnographic unstructured interviews and livedexperiences of selected key informants. As a coping strategy, the article recommends theadoption of a ‘quadruple helix’ (quad-helix) framework that promotes a multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional approach involving synergistic interactions among universities, private and public sector, communities and civil society