Scorched maize field in Mkanda
Extreme weather shocks manifested through the late onset of rains, prolonged dry spells, and floods have increased in frequency and intensity, pushing a large number of people into poverty and food insecurity.
For instance, Mchinji District is normally considered one of the districts that receive normal or good rainfall, but the narrative is no longer the same—it is among districts that have been affected by El Niño-induced prolonged dry spells.
Director of Agriculture, Environment, and Natural Resources for Mchinji, Hastings Yotamu, confirms that “it’s [the] worst farming season in some parts of the district” because 40 percent of the maize that farming households planted between October and November last year was scorched by the heat.
“The second crop [that] farming households planted late December dried out as well due to long dry spells and farmers resorted to uprooting. We are affected and in terms of maize production, the drop in production will go beyond 35 percent because some fields have completely dried out,” says Yotamu.
The plight of women, girl child
Mchinji, according to Yotamu, has about 162,000 farming households and 56,000 (35 percent) of the households have been affected. One of the affected farmers is 39-year-old Aida Zulu, from Chawala in the area of Senior Chief Mkanda the in district.
Zulu, a mother of four—aged between 4 and 15—is worried about hunger and the high cost of basic food commodities—put simply, it will be a tall order to manage a nutritious diet.
“I hoped for better yields this year from [my] half-acre maize field. With the little money I received from Bank Nkhonde (village bank), I did everything right to have a better crop, but little did I know that the dry spells would hit the district.
“If I knew, I would have invested the money in other income-generating activities. Where we will get the support for the kids?” laments Zulu.
Zulu’s family is an embodiment of many households struggling to adequately feed themselves and their children. El Niño induced dry spells have significantly reduced yields, exacerbating the already existing poverty.
According to World Bank data, 82% of Malawi’s population lives in rural areas, and women account for 65% of smallholder farmers, making them particularly exposed to food insecurity. Women are often dependent on natural resources and many earn a living in the informal sector, leaving them less able to withstand economic and environmental shocks.
The Bank observes that being unable to produce enough food to feed their families puts women under intense pressure to find alternative sources of income.
“This renders them more susceptive to sexual exploitation, which can take various forms such as transactional sex in exchange for goods and being trafficked into commercial exploitation.
“Family financial hardships also disproportionately affect girls, who are frequently pressured to drop out of school to do domestic work and find paid casual work. This, in turn, increases their susceptibility to exploitation, including false promises made by traffickers about jobs and education further afield,” it states.
It is estimated that around 1.5 girls in Malawi are at risk of becoming child brides as a direct result of climate change.
High cost of a nutritious diet
Malawi Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey report (MICS 2019/20) also shows that Malawi faces one of the highest rates of malnutrition in Southern Africa, with 36% of children stunted.
The report states that the root cause lies in a poor diet, driven by poverty and food insecurity worsened by climate change and rising food prices. And dry spells due to El Nino have affected agriculture yields, impacting an already distressed population.
Save the Children’s Cost of the Diet (CotD) and Household Economy Analysis (HEA)—for April 2024 to March 2025 consumption year—shows that current “El Nino-related impacts will likely push poor and very poor households to higher levels of food insecurity”.
The study also shows that poorer households in Zomba and Neno districts will face large income and food gaps throughout much of the upcoming consumption year.
“Critical gaps will be earlier and more severe than normal in these two districts. Mothers and young children are especially vulnerable, since most of children’s growth and development happens during pregnancy and until the child is 2 years, and this is the period when children are most likely to become sick and malnourished with lifelong consequences,” the report reads in part.
Likewise, UNICEF statistics show over 70 per cent of Malawi’s population lives below the income poverty line and approximately 63 per cent of children live in poverty and malnutrition is a serious challenge and contributes to preventable child deaths.
“23% of all child death cases in Malawi are related to under-nutrition; 37% of children in Malawi are affected by stunting while 4% of Malawian of under-five children suffer from acute malnutrition and stunted children are more likely to drop out of school and repeatedly experience lower productivity later in life,” reads a recent report compiled by UNICEF Malawi.
Counting the cost
The Malawi 2019 Floods Post Disaster Needs Report warns that Malawi is highly vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather events given its location along the great African rift valley, rapid population growth, unsustainable urbanisation, climate variability and change, and environmental degradation.
Now, 23 of the 28 districts have been affected by El Nino impacts, affecting 749,113 hectares of maize, representing 44.3 percent of the national crop area. About 600,000 metric tonnes of maize valued at K357.6 billion is required for the humanitarian response programme.
In 2022, climate extremes were the primary driver of acute food security for 56.8 million people in 12 countries. In Malawi, 80 percent of people depend on smallholder farming and 50.7 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and 20.5 percent are extremely poor (NSO, 2020).
The 2019 floods affected the food security of 2.3 million farming households. In addition, the loss and damage in monetary cost of these weather-related shocks have been huge, with the cost of the 2015 and 2019 floods estimated at USD335 million and USD220.2 million, respectively (Government of Malawi, 2015; 2019).
The link between the climate and hunger emergencies is chillingly clear. These extreme weather events are occurring at a time when Malawi needs to meet UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) I and II, which implores Malawi to end poverty in all its forms everywhere and end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030.
Lack of responsiveness
MwAPATA Institute, an independent agricultural policy think tank in Malawi, observes that these changes have major implications for human welfare and undermine development gains across sectors.
Research Director Research at MwAPATA Institute, Professor Levison Chawaula, says adverse economic shocks such as high cost of agricultural inputs, high food prices, and floods have a negative impact on food security status and households’ resilience capacity.
“Households face multiple and repeated shocks, averaging about three shocks per annum. Climatic shocks worsen food insecurity and the inability to achieve sustained economic growth,” he says.
Chairperson for the Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resources, Welani Chilenga, feels El Nino and its effects could have been averted “if we had taken the forecasts seriously, especially for Southern Region because, each time we have El Nino, Southern Region is the hardest hit.”
Chilenga, who claims to have worked for the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services (DCCMS) for over 40 years, says affordable farm inputs should have been concentrated in areas where the forecast indicated they are going to have rains.
“Farmers were given farm inputs through AIP and some had to use their own resources, especially large-scale farmers but for most of the people in the Southern Region, I think the preparations were not very good.
“It is somehow a total loss because though the rains have now come, most of the crops have already wilted and they will not be able to recover. We need to take these weather forecasts very seriously because if we don’t take them very seriously these are [the] effects,” Chilenga says.
Director of Land Resources in the Ministry of Agriculture, Gertrude Kambauwa, says to reduce poverty and vulnerability of the poor and the most vulnerable, government is implementing the National Social Support Policy (2012)—operationalised through the Malawi National Social Support Programme II (2018-2023).
She also says promotion of winter cropping and the distribution of inputs during the winter season can enhance agricultural productivity and food security.
“Supporting farmers with appropriate inputs such as seeds and fertilizers, during this period can enable them to cultivate additional crops and improve their overall agricultural production,” says Kambauwa.
However, Professor Chiwaula [MwAPATA Institute Research Director] says mega-farms should diversify to accommodate other crops that survive under dry conditions like roots and tubers, which should also be processed through value additions.
He also encourages communities, particularly farming households, to follow and respond accordingly to weather forecast messages by the DCCMS, noting the messaging from the department has “significantly improved”.
“The department indicated that the country will experience El nino and this implied that the country will not have good rains, but most of the farmers planted their usual crops.
“Few farmers decided to plant drought resistant crops. That’s lack of responsiveness. When we are talking of a drought, immediately you should also be talking of irrigation.” explains Chiwaula.
Director of Gender Affairs in the Ministry of Gender, Alice Mkandawire—while conceding that Malawi faces high cost of a nutritious diet—says addressing these problems must be central to climate response, including disaster adaption and scaling up gender-equitable climate-smart agriculture initiatives, among others.
Malawi 2063, the country’s long-term development, stresses the need to build resilience for households and communities against shocks and natural disasters, but for now, Zulu and other 2 million households, subjected to food insecurity due to El Nino, are at the mercy of well-wishers and humanitarian agencies.
