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The drought spell in Zimbabwe and neighboring Zambia and Malawi reached an unprecedented level. Both neighbors have declared national disasters. Zimbabwe could be on the brink of doing the same.
Zimbabwe is reeling under severe drought and consequent shortages of food and other amenities to support life. Several aid agencies are at work including USAID and the United Nations’ World Food Programme. These organizations are implementing various programs aimed at over 2.7 million people living in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger because of the drought.
Damages of devastating drought are visible everywhere. It manifests in the form of scorched crops, dying livestock, parched wells, and a spurt in waterborne diseases, particularly among children. The drought spell in Zimbabwe and neighboring Zambia and Malawi reached an unprecedented level. Both neighbors have declared national disasters. Zimbabwe could be on the brink of doing the same.
Drought is spreading to other geographies as well, such as Botswana and Angola to the west, and Mozambique and Madagascar to the east. The vicious weather cycle in the region has had a heavy impact. Heavy rains and floods, storms of high intensity, and drought spells affected man and nature alike.
The United Nations Children’s Fund says there are overlapping crises of extreme weather in eastern and southern Africa, with both regions lurching between storms and floods and heat and drought in the last year. In southern Africa, an estimated 9 million people, half of them children, need help in Malawi.
More than 6 million in Zambia, 3 million of them children, are impacted by the drought, UNICEF said. That’s nearly half of Malawi’s population and 30% of Zambia’s. While man-made climate change has spurred more erratic weather globally, there is something else parching southern Africa this year.
El Niño, the naturally occurring climatic phenomenon that warms parts of the Pacific Ocean every two to seven years, has varied effects on the world’s weather. In southern Africa, it means below-average rainfall, sometimes drought, and is being blamed for the current situation.
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https://trendsnafrica.com/malawi-declares-a-state-of-disaster-consequent-to-unprecedented-drought/
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema has said that 1 million of the 2.2 million hectares of his country’s staple corn crop have been destroyed. Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has appealed for $200 million in humanitarian assistance. The 2.7 million rural folk struggling in Zimbabwe is not even the full picture.
