Southern Africa hit by extreme drought, leaving some 20 millions facing hunger

The unprecedented drought that has enveloped large parts of southern Africa since late last year has impacted more than 6 million people in Zambia, 3 million of them children, nearly half of Malawi’s population and 30% of Zambia’s, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned.
The drought in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi has now reached crisis levels, having left millions facing hunger, which has prompted the latter two southern African countries to declare national disasters, while Zimbabwe could be on the brink of doing the same. This unprecedented wave of drought has been caused by extreme weather that scientists say is becoming more frequent and more damaging. It has also reached Botswana and Angola to the west, and Mozambique and Madagascar to the east, though much of this region was last year drenched by deadly tropical storms and floods.
The UNICEF says eastern and southern Africa has been hit by “overlapping crises” of extreme weather, as both regions have for the past year been lurching between storms and floods and heat and drought, the latter of which has scorched the crops that tens of millions of people grow themselves and rely on to survive. UNICEF and the USAID have said they aim to help some of the 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger. “Distressingly, extreme weather is expected to be the norm in eastern and southern Africa in the years to come,” said Eva Kadilli, UNICEF’s regional director.