BLANTYRE, MALAWI – JANUARY 18: Aerial view of landslides and damage caused by flash floods caused by Severe Tropical Cyclone Freddy. Freddy is an extremely long-lived, powerful and deadly tropical cyclone that crossed the southern Indian Ocean for over five weeks in February. It will hit the southern regions of Malawi in March 2023 and will occur in Blantyre, Malawi on January 18, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Contigo/Getty Images)
IStones dropped by Cyclone Freddy last year are scattered in the cornfields of Big Bone Jwawo, Mjiwa village in Mulanje, south of Malawi on the border with Mozambique.
Dry areas of sandy soil occupy the remainder of the field.Jwawo's April harvest
Three fields were once enough to feed a family for a year. Now they can barely get by.
“Life is very difficult because I have to support six children,” the farmer said. “The situation is even worse this year because of the continued drought. After the cyclone, we received some donations of supplies, but now it is each person's own. Masu.”
Such hardships are currently affecting nearly 2 million Malawian farmers, said Malawi's President Lazarus Chakwera, who declared a state of disaster for the fourth time in recent years.
The recent devastation is largely due to the El Niño phenomenon, which has brought dry weather to some countries and unusually heavy rains to others.
Mr Chakwera said 749,000 hectares of maize, more than 44% of the country's planted area, had been damaged due to El Niño.
“This situation is catastrophic,” Chakwera said. “Even if this were the first disaster in recent years, it would have been a disaster. Unfortunately, this is the fourth time in four years that I have declared a state of disaster.”
The president appealed for $200 million in food aid to disaster victims in 23 of the country's 28 districts.
A deadly combination of ferocious cyclones, made more powerful by climate change and local environmental damage from deforestation, is pushing Malawi to the brink of starvation. A World Food Program statement released last week, echoing the president's appeal, said 40% of Malawi's population faces hunger.
Cyclone Freddie in March 2023 caused the worst damage ever recorded in Malawi.
The heavy rains caused multiple floods and landslides in the south of the country, leaving 679 people dead and 537 missing. At least 2,186 people were injured and more than 659,278 people were evacuated.
A post-disaster assessment found that Malawi's economy lost $36 million in production losses. Forty-five percent of this loss was due to crops destroyed by floods, which flooded his 60,000 hectares, or 27 percent of his acreage that year.
But even before that disaster, 20% of Malawians were expected to struggle with food.
Freddie came after Storm Anna and Cyclone Gombe in 2022. Cyclone Gombe destroyed sanitation infrastructure and caused one of Malawi's worst cholera outbreaks.
The country had to import staple foods such as corn, rice, soybeans, cowpeas and groundnuts as domestic corn stocks ran short due to drastic reductions in farmers' production.
But import costs and scarcity have caused corn prices to nearly double in just one year. Current prices are three times the average of the past five years.
Farmers like Zwawo cannot afford to produce food on their farms or buy food in stores, have no access to aid, and face an unbearable future of endless hunger.
This article first appeared in The Continent, a pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. Designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp.Download your free copy here
