In a Cycle of Extreme Weather, Drought in Southern Africa Leaves Some 20 Million Facing Hunger

James Tshuma, a farmer in Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe,stands in the middle of his dried up crop field amid a drought in Zimbabwe, Friday, March, 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
James Tshuma, a farmer in Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe,stands in the middle of his dried up crop field amid a drought in Zimbabwe, Friday, March, 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
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In a Cycle of Extreme Weather, Drought in Southern Africa Leaves Some 20 Million Facing Hunger

James Tshuma, a farmer in Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe,stands in the middle of his dried up crop field amid a drought in Zimbabwe, Friday, March, 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
James Tshuma, a farmer in Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe,stands in the middle of his dried up crop field amid a drought in Zimbabwe, Friday, March, 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

Delicately and with intense concentration, Zanyiwe Ncube poured her small share of precious golden cooking oil into a plastic bottle at a food aid distribution site deep in rural Zimbabwe.
“I don't want to lose a single drop,” she said.
Her relief at the handout — paid for by the United States government as her southern African country deals with a severe drought — was tempered when aid workers gently broke the news that this would be their last visit, The Associated Press said.
Ncube and her 7-month-old son she carried on her back were among 2,000 people who received rations of cooking oil, sorghum, peas and other supplies in the Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe. The food distribution is part of a program funded by American aid agency USAID and rolled out by the United Nations' World Food Programme.
They're aiming to help some of the 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger because of the drought that has enveloped large parts of southern Africa since late 2023. It has scorched the crops that tens of millions of people grow themselves and rely on to survive, helped by what should be the rainy season.
They can rely on their crops and the weather less and less.
The drought in Zimbabwe, neighboring Zambia and Malawi has reached crisis levels. Zambia and Malawi have declared national disasters. Zimbabwe could be on the brink of doing the same. The drought has reached Botswana and Angola to the west, and Mozambique and Madagascar to the east.
A year ago, much of this region was drenched by deadly tropical storms and floods. It is in the midst of a vicious weather cycle: too much rain, then not enough. It's a story of the climate extremes that scientists say are becoming more frequent and more damaging, especially for the world's most vulnerable people.
In Mangwe, the young and the old lined up for food, some with donkey carts to carry home whatever they might get, others with wheelbarrows. Those waiting their turn sat on the dusty ground. Nearby, a goat tried its luck with a nibble on a thorny, scraggly bush.
Ncube, 39, would normally be harvesting her crops now — food for her, her two children and a niece she also looks after. Maybe there would even be a little extra to sell.
The driest February in Zimbabwe in her lifetime, according to the World Food Programme’s seasonal monitor, put an end to that.
“We have nothing in the fields, not a single grain," she said. “Everything has been burnt (by the drought).”
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 past 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.
“Distressingly, extreme weather is expected to be the norm in eastern and southern Africa in the years to come," said Eva Kadilli, UNICEF’s regional director.
While human-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.
The impact is more severe for those in Mangwe, where it's notoriously arid. People grow the cereal grain sorghum and pearl millet, crops that are drought resistant and offer a chance at harvests, but even they failed to withstand the conditions this year.
Francesca Erdelmann, the World Food Programme's country director for Zimbabwe, said last year's harvest was bad, but this season is even worse. "This is not a normal circumstance,” she said.
The first few months of the year are traditionally the “lean months” when households run short as they wait for the new harvest. However, there is little hope for replenishment this year.
Joseph Nleya, a 77-year-old traditional leader in Mangwe, said he doesn't remember it being this hot, this dry, this desperate. "Dams have no water, riverbeds are dry and boreholes are few. We were relying on wild fruits, but they have also dried up,” he said.
People are illegally crossing into Botswana to search for food and "hunger is turning otherwise hard-working people into criminals,” he added.
Multiple aid agencies warned last year of the impending disaster.
Since then, 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 struggling in rural Zimbabwe is not even the full picture. A nationwide crop assessment is underway and authorities are dreading the results, with the number needing help likely to skyrocket, said the WFP's Erdelmann.
With this year’s harvest a write-off, millions in Zimbabwe, southern Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar won’t be able to feed themselves well into 2025. USAID's Famine Early Warning System estimated that 20 million people would require food relief in southern Africa in the first few months of 2024.
Many won't get that help, as aid agencies also have limited resources amid a global hunger crisis and a cut in humanitarian funding by governments.
As the WFP officials made their last visit to Mangwe, Ncube was already calculating how long the food might last her. She said she hoped it would be long enough to avert her greatest fear: that her youngest child would slip into malnutrition even before his first birthday.



Taiwan Strait Not China’s, Taipei Says after Canadian Warship Passes Through

A Taiwan Coast Guard ship travels past the coast of China, in the waters off Nangan island of Matsu archipelago in Taiwan August 16, 2022. (Reuters)
A Taiwan Coast Guard ship travels past the coast of China, in the waters off Nangan island of Matsu archipelago in Taiwan August 16, 2022. (Reuters)
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Taiwan Strait Not China’s, Taipei Says after Canadian Warship Passes Through

A Taiwan Coast Guard ship travels past the coast of China, in the waters off Nangan island of Matsu archipelago in Taiwan August 16, 2022. (Reuters)
A Taiwan Coast Guard ship travels past the coast of China, in the waters off Nangan island of Matsu archipelago in Taiwan August 16, 2022. (Reuters)

The Taiwan Strait does not belong to China and any attempts to create tension threaten global security, the island's defense ministry said on Monday, after Beijing criticized Canada for sailing a warship through the sensitive waterway.

The US Navy and occasionally ships from allied countries like Canada, Britain and France transit the strait, which they consider an international waterway, around once a month.

Taiwan also considers it an international waterway but China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, says the strategic waterway belongs to it.

Last week the first US Navy ships transited the strait since President Donald Trump took office last month, drawing an angry reaction from China, which said the mission increased security risks.

Taiwan's defense ministry said China had responded to those sailings by carrying out "joint combat readiness patrols."

"The Taiwan Strait is absolutely not within the scope of China's sovereignty," the ministry said in a statement.

Freedom of navigation by "friendly and allied" countries through the strait are concrete actions that highlight the strait's legal status, and China is trying to create a false appearance that the strait is an "internal issue," it added.

"Peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is not only a matter of concern for Taiwan, but also a common concern for free and democratic countries around the world," the ministry said.

"Any deliberate attempts by the communist's military to create tension in the Taiwan Strait will pose a real threat to global security," the ministry said.

Neither China's defense ministry nor the Taiwan Affairs Office responded to requests for comment.

Taiwan has complained of repeated Chinese military activities near the island.

Its defense ministry said on Monday morning in its daily update of China's actions over the previous 24 hours that it had detected 41 Chinese military aircraft and nine ships around the island, concentrated in the strait and off Taiwan's southwest.

China's military lambasted Canada on Monday for sailing the warship through the strait.

Canada's actions "deliberately stirred up trouble" and undermined peace and stability in the strait, the People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theater Command said in a statement.

"Theater forces maintain a high level of alert at all times and resolutely counter all threats and provocations," it added.

Canada's Department of National Defense said in a statement that the Royal Canadian navy ship HMCS Ottawa recently conducted a transit throughout the Taiwan Strait.

"Canada has undertaken a number of transits through the Taiwan Strait to uphold the important principle of operating freely through international waterways in accordance with international law,” the department said.

Taiwan's defense ministry said on Sunday that the ship had sailed in a northerly direction, adding that Taiwanese forces also kept watch.

Taiwan's foreign ministry welcomed the sailing.

"Canada has once again taken concrete actions to defend the freedom, peace and openness of the Taiwan Strait and has demonstrated its firm position that the Taiwan Strait is international waters," it said on Sunday.

In October, a US and a Canadian warship sailed together through the strait, less than a week after China conducted a new round of war games around the island.

Taiwan's democratically elected government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims, saying only that the island's people can decide their future.