At a food assistance distribution location located in the heart of rural Zimbabwe, Zanyiwe Ncube carefully and intently filled a plastic container with her meager portion of priceless golden cooking oil.
Aid workers gently imparted the news that this would be their final visit, tempering her delight at the distribution paid for by the U.S. government while her country in southern Africa battles with a severe drought.
In the Mangwe district in southwest Zimbabwe, 2,000 people, including Ncube and her 7-month-old infant whom she carried on her back, were given rations of cooking oil, sorghum, peas, and other goods.
The World Food Programme of the United Nations is implementing a program that includes food distribution, which is sponsored by USAID, an American aid organization.
With the drought engulfing most of southern Africa since late last year, nearly 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe face starvation. This is the population they hope to assist.
Tens of millions of people depend on their own crops for survival, but it has scorched them due to the rainy season that should be occurring.
Their dependence on the weather and their harvests is dwindling.
The current drought conditions in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and neighboring Zambia are dire.
Malawi and Zambia have both proclaimed national emergencies. It’s possible that Zimbabwe is about to follow suit.
Mozambique and Madagascar are to the east, and Botswana and Angola to the west have been affected.
Deadly tropical storms and floods soaked much of this region a year ago.
We are in the midst of a harsh weather cycle: too much rain, then not enough. Scientists claim that these climate extremes are becoming more common and harmful, particularly to the most vulnerable people on the planet.
Old and young, some on wheelbarrows and others on donkey carts to transport home whatever they could receive, were waiting in line for food in Mangwe. People sat on the dusty ground, waiting for their turn.
Normally, 39-year-old Ncube would be harvesting her crops to provide food for her, her two kids, and a niece she also takes care of. Perhaps there would even be some extra inventory to sell.
According to the seasonal monitor kept up by the World Food Programme, that came to an end in February, which was the driest in Zimbabwean history.
Not a single grain is there in the fields. All has dried up,” she remarked. Eastern and southern Africa are experiencing “overlapping crises” due to extreme weather, according to the UN Children’s Fund. During the past year, both regions have alternated between heat waves and droughts, storms, and floods.
An estimated 9 million people in southern Africa, half of them children, are in need of assistance in Malawi.
According to UNICEF, the drought is affecting more than 6 million people in Zambia, 3 million of whom are children.
That represents about 50% of the people in Malawi and 30% in Zambia.
There is something else scorching southern Africa this year, even as man-made climate change has led to increasingly unpredictable weather worldwide.
The naturally occurring climatic phenomenon known as El Niño, which warms sections of the Pacific Ocean every two to seven years, has a variety of affects on weather patterns worldwide.
It is attributed to the existing state of affairs and denotes below-average rainfall and occasionally drought in southern Africa.
People in areas like Mangwe, which is known for its dry climate and where people cultivate crops like pearl millet and sorghum, which can withstand drought and yield harvests, are particularly affected.
Even they couldn’t resist the circumstances this year. The harvest was poor last year, but this season is even worse, according to Francesca Erdelmann, the national director for Zimbabwe for the World Food Programme. She declared, “This is not an ordinary situation.”
As households wait for the new harvest, the first few months of the year are known as the “lean months.” But there’s not much chance of replenishing this year.
Several assistance organizations warned of an impending catastrophe last year, Since then, the president of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, has declared that 1 million of the 2.2 million hectares of staple corn crops in his nation have been devastated.
Lazarus Chakwera, the president of Malawi, has made a request for $200 million in aid.
Zimbabwe’s 2.7 million impoverished rural people are not even the whole story.
The WFP’s Erdelmann stated that a statewide crop assessment is currently taking place, and officials are “dreading” the results, since the number of people in need of assistance is expected to soar.
In the first few months of 2024, 20 million people in southern Africa would need food assistance, according to USAID’s Famine Early Warning System.
Into 2025, millions of people in Zimbabwe, southern Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar won’t be able to feed themselves since this year’s harvest is a write-off.
Many people simply won’t receive such assistance since aid organizations are likewise strapped for cash in the face of a worldwide food crisis and government funding cuts for humanitarian causes.
Ncube was already estimating how long the food might last her when the WFP representatives paid their final visit to Mangwe.
Her biggest concern, that her smallest kid would become malnourished before turning one, would not materialize, she added, hoping it would last long enough.
