Inside Africa: How Zimbabwe Combats Its “Worst Food Crisis In Decades”
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In a remote region in eastern Zimbabwe, the phrase Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo (a country built by its own people) resonates with an innovation of locals and health officials. It is the slogan of Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s current president. Its latest brainchild is a porridge consisting of cheap and locally sourced beans, eggs, maize, butternut, milk and baobab fruit, called Maworesa. It means “the very best” in Shona, the local language, and is saving lives as hospital admissions for malnutrition doubled across the country, since last June.
Mudzi, where Maworesa has become a vital source of food for locals, is one of the worst affected regions of the drought which ravaged crops across Zimbabwe this year. After the rainy season failed between January and March 2024 due to the El-Niño weather pattern, the country declared a state of national disaster in late April. Up to 60% of crops died, and those that didn’t, performed poorly. As a result of this, it has been estimated that over the dry season which stretches from June 2024 to January 2025, up to 7.7 million people in the country will face hunger.
Across the rest of southern Africa, the absent rain has also strained food resources. Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, and Zambia have also declared a national disaster. Up to 70 million are estimated to be impacted across the south of the continent, many parts of which are very dry, such as the semi-arid Kalahari Desert which stretches across Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. By mid-October, the World Food Programme estimated more than 27 million had died across the region as a result of the drought, and 21 million children were malnourished, in what for many communities is “the worst food crisis in decades”.
Across Africa, many people continue to rely on their own farming for food. Land is abundant and accessible, and buying food is considerably more expensive for many than growing it themselves. This however creates a strong reliance on seasonal rainfall, which occurs only once a year across most of the continent. When there is a drought, this doesn’t only strain access to water, but also access to food, healthcare, and many other areas of society, including economic assets such as mining. Severe droughts, as Zimbabwe is currently seeing, has the potential to cause societal collapse.
A direct consequence for most however, is entering survival mode. Many families have had to reduce the number of meals a day to one, as finances and food access diminish. Going to work or school is also replaced by long walks to fetch water or food, especially for young girls and women. For them, engaging in sex work in exchange for “a gallon of maize” is a possibility they must envisage. For Agness Shikabala, a 23-year-old mother of six living in Zambia, it is a temptation she is praying God will keep her away from. She is out of options to feed the children, after her husband left when the crops failed to look for work in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital.
A food programme from the government and UNICEF, which used to run three times a week, is now only able to run once a week and risks ceasing altogether. Zimbabwe’s government has attempted to appeal for international aid. The provided funding is vastly below what is required to keep Zimbabwe fed. Maworesa, the innovative porridge which has become a household name in Mudzi and Mutoko, is therefore a vital and sustainable solution against Zimbabwe’s food scarcity concerns. Especially for the country’s more rural populations, of which 57% are expected to see food insecurity in the coming months.
Zimbabwe has also seen other feats of climate adaptation in the face of the droughts. In Nyangambe, a region in south-eastern Zimbabwe where corn crops were wiped out, some farmers are turning to breeding black soldier fly maggots, which can be used as chicken feed. Since they can live off food waste and animal manure, according to the Unites States Agency for International Development (USAID), it halves the productions costs of chicken farming, while simultaneously delivering reliable food both in eggs and meat. It is nutritious too: black soldier fly maggots are composed of roughly 60% crude protein, according to Robert Musundire, professor in agricultural science and entomology at Chinhoyi University of Technology.
USAID has introduced alternatives like cultivating more resilient crops such as millet, which requires significantly less water than corn. Solar powered irrigation is also being financed by the agency. Takunda is a project which aims to find climate resilient solutions to keep Zimbabwe’s remote communities afloat during times of drought. They installed 60 solar-powered boreholes by the end of July 2024, which is giving locals access to groundwater reserves when water becomes scarce.
While these solutions are effective, some may not be so popular. In response to diminishing lack of food, the Zimbabwean government has announced plans to cull 200 of the country’s elephants. The decision comes in conjunction with population control procedures of Zimbabwe’s national parks, which is home to over 84,000 elephants, and witnessed 50 human deaths last year due to attacks. To be sure, Zimbabwe is known for its elephant conservation efforts, and previous droughts have seen up to 200 elephants die a season. Yet, while it would be the first cull since 1988, following Namibia’s decision to cull 83, Zimbabwe is also known for lobbying to reopen the ivory trade (of which the country has stockpiles amounting to $600,000) as well as the trade of live elephants. For conservationists, this is a step in the wrong direction.
Climate adaptation is important for Zimbabwe, and many other countries across the southern hemisphere, because droughts such as the current one are not uncommon. El-Niño is a meteorological phenomenon which occurs in the southern pacific when trade winds blowing west slow down or even blow eastward. This disrupts the Pacific’s natural temperature cycle known as the southern oscillation and causes warm water to remain at the surface of the ocean. The atmosphere heats up, and more condensation occurs, leading to heavier and more violent rainfall in some parts of the planet, and more frugal rainfall in others.
The El-Niño weather pattern, also known as ENSO, has far reaching effects on the planet. It is also consistent and getting stronger. While it is unclear whether climate change is behind this, or whether El-Niño will get more frequent as global warming progresses, a warmer planet will increase El-Niño’s effects on rainfall. For Zimbabwe, which is expected to see a 38% decline in availability to water by 2050, droughts will not go away. They will only become more frequent.
It is therefore crucial that continued climate adaptation efforts pave the way to more resilient and sustainable infrastructure. Climate change, which is expected to impact Africa and other countries in the global south most severely, should become a number one priority if countries like Zimbabwe want to remain inhabitable in what current projections estimate will be a 1.5 degrees warmer world by 2050. For many of the continent’s countries, such a transition is already taking place. As the response to Zimbabwe’s appeal for funding demonstrates though, they could use a little more help.
