In Zimbabwe, El Nino brings back the specter of famine

At this time of year, normally lush green, Ladias Konje’s maize fields remain sadly yellowed by drought: the El Nino climate phenomenon returns the specter of hunger to millions of Zimbabweans.

“We have to count on freshly harvested corn, pumpkins and peanuts. But this year nothing is growing in the fields,” laments a 38-year-old farmer we met in the village of Kanyemba, in the northeast of the country.

According to the United Nations, more than 13 million people in southern Africa are in need of food and that number is expected to increase in the coming months as the effects of months of insufficient rain are felt.

In Zimbabwe, authorities urged people to tighten their belts: “Families must not waste. They must be careful and prepare only the food necessary for each meal,” advised Leonard Munamati, head of the government’s agriculture and rural development advisory agency.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has promised that no Zimbabwean will die of hunger. But Ladias Konje says that already, like many others, her children go to school every morning on an empty stomach. The tobacco plantation, which usually allows him to earn a little, also did not yield as much as expected.

“Families depend on wild fruit picking,” MP Tendai Nyabani warned during a visit to Kanyemba, a stronghold of the ZANU-PF party in power since the country’s independence in 1980.
Some are now reduced to making flour from chemically treated seeds originally intended only for planting, the elected official complained.

The government has the support of NGOs and the UN to deliver aid. And the opposition has called for ZANU-PF strongholds not to be favored during the distribution, something the government has been accused of doing in the past.
The authorities are also considering increasing food imports. But El Nino, which causes much of the tropical Pacific to warm and lead to higher temperatures around the world, is also wreaking havoc in neighboring countries.

“Traditionally, we used to buy organic maize from Zambia. Today, Zambia doesn’t have it and neither does Malawi,” says Tafadzwa Musarara, president of the Zimbabwe Millers Association.
In February, a state of disaster was declared in Zambia due to drought.

“Now we all buy GMO corn from South Africa,” continues Mr. Musarara. Imports of genetically modified grains were reintroduced into Zimbabwe in 2020 during the previous drought.
Along with supply difficulties, prices also skyrocketed, further fueling galloping inflation.
In Kanyemba and surrounding areas, a 25 kg bag of maize can now cost up to $15. Unaffordable in a country where 42% of the population lives in extreme poverty on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Food Programme.

Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector was severely weakened by Robert Mugabe’s post-independence land reform, evicting thousands of white farmers to redistribute land to under-equipped and under-trained black farmers.

The government is now encouraging farmers to shift crops to more resistant grains such as sorghum and is counting on the construction of two dams that started in 2018 in the Kanyemba region but were delayed by the disease pandemic.

“With the completion of these two dams, we will have a sustainable solution in terms of water and food production,” MP Nyabani hopes.