Zimbabwe is facing an "economic and humanitarian crisis" amid a lethal cocktail of macroeconomic instability, climate shocks and policy missteps, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The southern African nation's economy is expected to have contracted by 7.5% in 2019, according to the World Bank, with extreme poverty rising to 34%, or 5.7 million people, and the country is facing its worst hunger crisis in a decade.

Inflation was running at more than 500% at the end of last year, the newly introduced Zimbabwean dollar (ZWL$) has lost most of its value, and climate shocks have crippled Zimbabwe's agriculture and electricity generation, rendering more than half of the population food insecure.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa last week made a plea for international funding, with Zimbabwe's outstanding foreign debts of $8 billion having isolated the country from additional loans from the IMF, World Bank, African Development Bank and the Paris Club.

Mnangagwa's government, elected to office in July 2018 after a military coup d'état in November 2017 ousted long-time dictator Robert Mugabe, adopted an agenda focused on macroeconomic stabilization and reforms which were supported by an IMF staff monitored program, adopted last May.

"Major shifts in policy have followed Robert Mugabe's ouster, but the government has very little to show for these changes," Jee-A van der Linde, economist at NKC African Economics, said in a note Monday.

These reforms included a fiscal consolidation aimed at reducing monetary financing of the deficit, the reintroduction of the domestic currency in February 2019, and the restructuring of the command agriculture financing model to a public-private partnership with commercial banks.