Zambian people suffer from drought, August 2024. Photo: @UzalendoNews_KE
August 15, 2024 Hour: 20:48
According to a statement from CARE and government data, 84 of the country’s 116 districts are affected by the extreme drought.
Almost half of Zambia’s population, 9.8 million people, are affected by the devastating drought caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon. Many families can only eat once a day and have to travel long distances to fetch water, the organization CARE warned on Thursday.
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According to a CARE statement and government data, 84 of the country’s 116 districts are affected, while in 27 of those districts where the non-governmental organization conducted a survey, 79 percent of the population consumes “little or to the extreme.”
About 76 percent also resort to extreme methods, such as reducing the number of meals per day or demanding that adults eat less to ensure that children are fed.
“We only eat once a day, at lunch. This has hit our children hard and we see it every day because they find it difficult to get up in the morning,” says CARE Reicco Mudenda Kamwaya, a 56-year-old woman, mother of five children and leader of a group of 25 farmers in the village of Sikalongo (in the south).
“All our produce on the farm has dried up and died. The grain we had stored from last season has run out. Our animals are dying because they have no grass and no water. We are suffering a lot,” he added.
The situation is made worse by the fact that 76 percent of the country’s livestock and 66 percent of its poultry live in the 84 districts affected by water shortages, the organization warned.
“The situation in Zambia is dire and continues to worsen, especially for women and girls. Not only do they have to walk long distances, making them vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence, but when they do find water, it is often not clean, putting them and their families at risk of disease,” said Chikwe Mbweeda, CARE Director in Zambia.
A national emergency has currently been declared in Zambia due to severe drought.
