Kitsepile Nyathi
24 January 2008
Nairobi — Children show fish which they caught along what used to be the main road between Caia and Sena, which has been flooded, in Mozambique's Zambezi valley yesterday.
In Zimbabwe it was dubbed the "Mother of all Agricultural Seasons", amid high hopes that a normal rainy season would reverse almost 10 years of decline in agricultural productivity, which has spawned unending food shortages and an economic recession.
But after almost two months of torrential rainfall, Southern Africa is once again facing another failed cropping season, that will worsen food security in some countries, analysts have warned.
Since early December, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have been hit by exceptionally heavy rainfall, which has caused floods described by meteorologists as the "worst in living memory". Already 45 lives have been lost in Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe since the flooding began, while thousands of homes were washed away and vast swathes of crops were destroyed.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa last week declared the flooding a state of national disaster as heavy rains continued to fall in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, feeding into rivers running through Mozambique, particularly Zambezi.
The four countries lie on the Zambezi River Basin, an area that is prone to flooding owing to the presence of some of Africa's biggest man-made lakes. These are Cahora Bassa and Kariba, which has also recorded unusually high summer rainfall this season.
Thousands of lives
Zambezi River, the fourth largest in Africa, is already overflowing, threatening thousands of lives and crops downstream and heightening fears of a severe flooding season. Last weekend, relief agencies estimated that close to 60,000 people have been displaced in Mozambique and a further 100,000 were at risk while in Zimbabwe around 2,000 were affected in the country's low-lying areas.
There are also reports of widespread destruction of large tracts of crop fields, with affected farmers already contemplating starting all over again. Power failures in Zimbabwe and Zambia due to collapsing electricity grids have become the immediate effects of the worsening floods but analysts feel famine would be the long-term consequence.
Zimbabwe, which is in the middle of its worst economic crisis since independence 28 years ago, is the hardest hit, with aid agencies already predicting a disastrous agricultural season. According to the latest disaster alert issued by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET), the floods have disrupted the entire agricultural season and destroyed productive assets such as cattle for most of Zimbabwe's rural peasants.
The former southern African economic powerhouse is struggling to feed itself and President Robert Mugabe's government had been pinning hopes of an economic turnaround on a successful agricultural season.
FEWSNET, which is an arm of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), says effects of the 10-year-old economic recession would make it particularly difficult for Zimbabwe to recover from the floods, especially after successive years of droughts and failed cropping seasons.
"Zimbabwean government estimates indicate that, midway through December 2007, farmers had planted about 32 per cent more area under maize than had been planted around the same time last season," reads the report. "However, in most parts of the country heavy rains since mid-December have slowed land preparation and planting and promoted weed growth. Most rivers are at risk of flooding and many low-lying areas have already been flooded."
Excessive rainfall has also compromised the growth of established crops, particularly in low-lying fields where heavy clay soils have been water-logged. Fields with lighter, sandy soils have been leached of nutrients, added the report. "Fertiliser is scarce this season, but even those farmers with access to fertiliser will not apply it if the rains continue with the same intensity," FEWSNET said. Analysts say Zimbabwe's neighbours were better prepared to deal with the floods this time around because their infrastructure had improved.
In the 2000/1 season when Southern Africa was hit by floods of a similar magnitude, Mozambique, which was still recovering from decades of civil war, was the worst affected, triggering a humanitarian crisis of huge proportions. "Zimbabwe still had proper infrastructure and the authorities were able to contain the situation," said Mr Emmert Makombe, an agronomist based in Chiredzi, southern Zimbabwe.
"But this year without fertiliser and seed for replanting the situation is bound to be worse for our farmers." This time there is no chance for recovery. One of the reasons Zimbabwe survived the Cyclone Eline-induced floods in the 2000/2001 farming season was because it still had a viable commercial farming sector and the economic problems blamed on Mr Mugabe's policies were just setting in.
But this time around the commercial farming sector is virtually non-existent after almost 4,000 white farmers were pushed off their land during a controversial land reform programme.
In the more than six seasons the new black farmers have been on the land, the southern African country of about 12 million people has been facing a widening food crisis, as the land recipients struggle to gain experience.
The chaotic land reform programme, which from inception has been condemned by international donors as unworkable and a recipe for disaster, is turning out to be just that. Production of cash crops such as tobacco and the staple maize continues to plummet, dragging the economy down with it. With the damage caused by the floods, the situation is bound to be worse, analysts warn.
"A lot of fertiliser, especially ammonium nitrate or alternatively urea, will be needed to save crops in situations where the fields were not washed away," said Dr Alex Nyoni of the state-run Department of Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services (Agritex).
"But the fertiliser is not available and the little that is found on the black market is beyond the reach of the majority of farmers." Zimbabwe requires 720,000 tonnes of compound D fertiliser and 774,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate each year. But this year all the manufactures say they can only produce 53,000 tonnes of compound D and 46,714 tonnes of ammonium nitrate subject to the availability of $12 million for spare parts and raw materials and an improvement in electricity supplies.
State-controlled
Agritex and its National Early Warning Unit (NEWU) and a team including the state-controlled grain monopoly, the Grain Marketing Board, the Meteorological Services Department, the Ministry of Agriculture, Central Statistical Office, farmers' unions, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and FEWSNET are already planning a major crop assessment at the end of this month to determine the extent of the damage. FAO, in collaboration with its NGO partners, also plans a post- planting assessment next month.
Both assessments will focus on rural areas and are likely to provide more information on the impact of the floods on the season's crop production.
However, even before the assessments are carried out there are already fears of donor fatigue as food aid will not be restricted to the flood victims. An increasing number of Zimbabweans can no longer feed themselves, with aid agencies saying more people in urban areas are in danger of starvation.
Already, the floods have started wreaking havoc on Zimbabwe and Zambia's electricity grids, which have been disrupted by systems failure twice since the weekend. On Saturday, Zimbabwe and Zambia, as well as Botswana, were plunged into darkness after the inter-regional electricity grid collapsed. In Zambia, the situation was normalised after eight hours while in Zimbabwe most parts of the country were still without power on Wednesday afternoon.
Electricity utilities in both countries said transmission pylons were collapsing under the weight of the heavy rains. Power and water failures have worsened in Zimbabwe dramatically in recent weeks and the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) says it had no foreign currency to import spare parts to repair ageing equipment.
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