Malawi: The Shrinking of Lake Chilwa

15 September 2021

In Southern Malawi, a landlocked south-eastern country in Africa, temperatures have been infamously known to get extremely hot. Most residents would have noted the year 2012, where most residents saw scorching temperatures that threatened the livelihoods of all Malawians. This is because, during this year, the vast expanse of Lake Chilwa almost vanished, such was the temperatures at the time. The dry climate had caused little rain to support the rivers that would eventually feed the lake, meaning that Lake Chilwa soon began to deplete.

Alfred Samuel, a 52-year-old from the Zomba district remembered the reaction to that hot year, saying, "Many fishermen were forced to scramble for land near the lake banks, while others had to migrate to the city". These would have been families that would have spent generations living by the lake, forced to move away from their ancestral homes due to the rising temperature and the fleeting water reserves of the lake' "We could barely feed our children because the lake could not provide enough fish, or water for rice growing" Samuel said.

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