Ingenuity helps Zimbabwe weather drought and US aid cuts
Last year, Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park fed villagers who were starved by drought with elephants they had culled to reduce overpopulation.
This year, the nearby community of Mabale is banking on rain-harvesting to help locals grow enough food, using chicken wire, canvas and cement to get through the extreme weather that has become Zimbabwe's new norm.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a state of disaster last April because of the drought and climate experts say this kind of extreme weather is only going to get worse.
'Zimbabwe is a country highly affected by climate change, and looking ahead, science tells us that the situation is likely to become worse,' said Mattias Soderberg, global climate lead at DanChurchAid, a Danish humanitarian organisation.
In 2024, Zimbabwe was hit by Southern Africa's worst drought in 40 years. Harvests failed and water reserves dried up in a country where 70% of people rely on subsistence agriculture.
The unprecedented drought was fuelled by El Nino, a climate phenomenon that can worsen drought or storms — weather that is made more likely by climate change.
Last year, the United Nations said Zimbabwe was among 18 locations that risked a 'firestorm of hunger' in the absence of aid.
But now aid has been heavily cut worldwide after President Donald Trump gutted the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on taking office this year.
US funding supported a range of projects in Zimbabwe in agriculture, health and food security.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has received termination notices for more than 100 programmes, with Africa the worst hit, a Rome-based spokesperson said via email.
It couldn't come at a worse time for Zimbabwe, as it counts the cost of its latest drought — and readies for the next one.
'Without funding, important efforts to increase resilience, and to adapt to the effects of climate change, may never become reality,' Soderberg said.
Layiza Mudima, a 49-year-old mother from Mapholisa village in Mabale, about 2km northeast of the park, said her community was facing 'a severe water challenge'.
Around Hwange, last year's drought dried up the boreholes and waterholes, threatening wildlife in the park and depriving people in Mabale of drinking water.
And though rainfall from December to February this year was normal or above, fallout from the last drought persists.
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