Extreme drought plunges southern Africa into hunger crisis

JOHN YANG: There's a growing hunger crisis across southern Africa brought on by an extreme drought.

That's devastating farmers in the food supply.

Ali Rogin has more.

ALI ROGIN: A sweeping drought has devastated Southern Africa, forcing Zimbabwe's president to declare a state of national disaster.

It is the third country to do so in recent months joining Malawi and Zambia.

The El Nino-induced drought has scorched crops and left millions hungry in the region.

Zimbabwe was once an agricultural powerhouse that exported grain to surrounding countries.

But over the last few decades, it's been heavily dependent on aid agencies for food to survive.

ZANYIWE NCUBE (through translator): Our food situation is difficult.

We only eat once a day because we have nothing in the fields not a single grain.

Everything has dried up in the drought.

We also have problems with sourcing water.

ALI ROGIN: But as aid groups faced budget cuts and broaden their operation to other conflicts, the crisis in southern Africa is expected to worsen.

Tendai Marima is a freelance journalist based in Zimbabwe and joins me now.

Tendai, thank you so much for being here.

We just mentioned some of the top line weather conditions that are contributing to low crop yield.

But let's talk a little more in depth about the factors that are playing into these conditions being so bad in southern Africa right now.

TENDAI MARIMA, Freelance Journalist: The situation that is affecting Southern Africa has to do with the late rainfalls that came, normally in a season the rain would begin in about October or November, and right up until April, but what we saw this year was that the rains were delayed, and they only came very late in December.

And it was just like patches of rain.

And then after that we had some very dry months.

And this is when Zambia declared that they had been a national disaster because over 50 percent of the planted crops had failed.

And for sure, a lot of harvest across different countries have been devastated.

ALI ROGIN: Do experts agree that El Nino, the weather pattern that is global is driving these cycles that we're seeing?

And if so why does it seem to be affecting Southern Africa so intensely at this moment?

TENDAI MARIMA: I think with Southern Africa, from what climate scientists tell us is that it'll be two years of the El Nino phenomenon.

And then one year possibly of the La Nina phenomenon, which is a situation where there's too much rain.

And this is what we've seen happening over the past few years.

In 2019, we had cyclones that were affecting Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe and South Africa.

And from that a total of 1000 people died because of those extreme floods.

And now what we're seeing is that where we've come again, to a drought period, this is El Nino part.

And what they're anticipating is that there won't be much rain, and the lean season is likely to last well into 2025.

So from about September 2025 is when people can possibly hope that they might be changed, but it's uncertain at this stage.

ALI ROGIN: And incredibly long amount of time.

We mentioned that Zimbabwe and the surrounding countries were at one point, regional bread baskets, and now were heavily dependent on aid to combat the suffering of civilians in situations like this.

Can you just tell us about how stark that reversal of fortunes has been over the past couple of decades?

TENDAI MARIMA: it's been incredible to witness.

Because I remember, as a child growing up, I think one of the worst droughts that Zimbabwe experienced was in about 1992.

I was still quite young then.

But I do remember, you know, there being food handouts and things, but the country was able to recover.

But when we got into the 2000s with all the other political things that happened in the country, and also, because most of the commercial farms, the large commercial farms that used to produce a lot of food for domestic consumption, and also for export, these were white owned farms.

And these were taken over during the land reform period, that it left the country without the farming resources and without the financial resources to be able to continue farming effectively.

Whereas other countries in the region, they may have things to prefer, or at least have plans in place to protect themselves from the shocks of the drought.

But for a country like Zimbabwe, it's in a dire state.

And the situation is very severe because at least 2.7 million people are facing hunger.

ALI ROGIN: In terms of some of the contemporary domestic issues that are playing out in Zimbabwe in March, the government forcibly removed American aid workers from USAID.

The president is also under U.S. sanctions right now for corruption and human rights abuses.

How do those issues affect aid workers ability to help civilians right now?

TENDAI MARIMA: it costs the dark cloud over the level of support that USAID will be able to provide to the country.

You know, security has heightened around food distributions.

Another concern is possibly with the delivery of food aid, right, because things such as cooking oil, because it's a fortified kind of cooking oil that USAID distributes to communities, things such as that also the cornmeal that USAID distributes.

Things have to be shipped.

And it takes about six weeks for WFP and USAID to be able to get food into the country.

So if there are all these sort of tensions, it raises questions, how much longer will it take, given the situation that there is suspicion from the state of the role that USAID is playing in the country although they have stated that their intentions are purely humanitarian, and it is the largest donor to Zimbabwe the government still has a suspicion so you know, It rains a lot of questions to say who will suffer if the suspicion then delays what is meant to be for the people.

ALI ROGIN: Tendai Marima, freelance journalist based in Zimbabwe, thank you so much for joining us.

TENDAI MARIMA: Thank you.