'The streets of Harare were littered with money'
Professor Gift Mugano describes when Zimbabwe’s inflation hit 89.7 sextillion per cent
Witness History · BBC World Service
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Show Notes
In November 2008, Johns Hopkins University calculated Zimbabwe’s year-on-year inflation rate as 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000% – one of the worst cases of hyperinflation in history.
Professor Gift Mugano was a government economist at the time.
He tells Vicky Farncombe what it was like to live through those times when wages were worthless and there was no food to buy in the shops.
“It was a very painful period. It is a year which one would not want to remember,” he said.
(Photo: Harare shoppers in an almost empty supermaket. Credit: Desmond Kwande/AFP via Getty Images)