When rain failed last year, women in Banana Village, Traditional Authority Jalavikuwa in Mzimba District, refused to surrender. Armed with hoes, watering cans and buckets, they took to winter cropping in the nearest wetland as their last resort. “We laboured for the crop that would save us months later,” recalls Muni Nyirenda, 29.
“We dug cracked earth until our hands cracked. We had no pump, only hope.” The secretary of Chamfuko Micro Irrigation Scheme says the vast lowlands along Kasito River, a tributary of South Rukuru, has been idle for “lost decades”. The fertile but neglected stretch was ripped and stripped of its msangu trees by brick-making.
Farmers upland waited for the rains, but the skies keep failing them. Across the country, 80 percent of farmers rely on unpredictable rainfall, but droughts, storms and floods dump millions in hunger and poverty amid climate change. The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee reports that nearly 4.4 million Malawians require food aid until the next harvesting season in March.
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President Peter Mutharika has declared a state of disaster in all 28 districts, following a spate of drought and pest attacks. The World Food Programme attributes the worsening food crisis to a chain of climate shocks. Last year, the Evangelical Lutheran Development Service (ELDS) rolled out a three-year initiative in Mzimba North in response to hunger and poverty fuelled by chronic crop losses, limited access to irrigation and rising vulnerability of women and the elderly.
The Bread for the World of Germany funds the Climate Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Project, which supports about 1 500 households surrounding the irrigation scheme. It trained them in climate-smart farming and how to run small-scale enterprises. The project aims to reach 7 500 people in 17 villages, according to ELDS project officer Gazeli Phiri.
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