Early in 2024, when it became apparent that Zimbabwe was on the cusp of a severe drought, President Mnangagwa Emmerson threatened to sack some traditional chiefs in the country, accusing them of neglecting their other traditional duty of conducting rain-making rituals. With this 82-year-old traditionalist at the helm, it is not surprising that this southern African nation – once regarded as the bread basket of the African continent, has been unable to make hurried steps towards climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The result is a global appeal for US$ 3.3 billion to feed nine of the country’s 16 million citizens who are without food after an El Ninõ-induced drought led to an 80 percent crop failure this year.
According to the UN, more than half of the harvest has been destroyed because of the drought, threatening 7.6 million people with acute hunger. Some 5.9 million people in rural areas and 1.7 million people in urban areas may face acute hunger in the coming lean period (January to March) until the next harvest in April 2025.
The president is not alone in holding beliefs that have no basis in science. Ishmael Chokurongerwa, the leader of one of the many African Apostolic church cults in the country, and his followers are adamant that sending children to school, the use of modern medicines, and other common modern practices are responsible for this drought that the country is suffering. These Apostolic church groups have a huge following in Zimbabwe and throughout the southern African region.
With political leaders like Mnangagwa in charge, and followers like these Apostolic sect members behind him, it becomes clear how the country is being slow to find appropriate solutions to address the climate crisis that is only worsening.
Hunger with 10,000 dams
Zimbabwe is a classic case of what lack of knowledge can do. Although the country has abundant land and water, experts say knowledge appears to be the missing link for the country to find a formula to sustainably feed itself, worse still when rains fail. The country requires two million metric tonnes of maize and 400,000 tonnes of wheat per year, but over the years, the former net exporter of grain to the entire African continent has struggled to produce even half of its own food requirements as droughts have become more frequent. This is because the country’s farming primarily remains rain-fed.
Yet the country has the highest number of dams on the African continent. According to Zimbabwe National Water Authority spokesperson, Marjorie Munyonga, as of 2022, Zimbabwe had a total of 9,821 dams ranging in size from small weirs to large dams such as Kariba, Tugwi-Mukosi, Mutirikwi, Osborne, Chivero, Mazvikadei, Sebakwe, and Manyame among others. These dams have a cumulative capacity of 10,558,610 mega-litres.
A majority of these dams were constructed during the colonial period between 1890 and 1980.
The country also has 33,3 million hectares of agricultural land, 10 million hectares of which were transferred from white commercial farmers to some 250,000 landless black households in a controversial land reform programme that started in the year 2000.
“We have been highlighting this (need to make irrigation central to farming) for many years but there is no meaningful action,” a former director at one of the country’s agro-parastatals said. “You can tell that climate denial is very strong at the highest level so it is unrealistic to expect robust climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives in this country in the near future,” added the agronomist, who wished to stay anonymous for professional reasons.
Climate crisis
Global Climate Risk Index ranked Zimbabwe among the global top 20 countries most affected by the impacts of extreme weather in the two decades between 2000 and 2019. The country has seen factors such as increasingly frequent and longer droughts, shorter rainy seasons, and hotter temperatures conspiring to make rain-fed farming increasingly risky for the majority 70 percent of the population that depend on agriculture for their sustenance.
Experts have warned that by 2100, arid and semi-arid regions across Africa could increase by between 5 percent and 8 percent. As for Zimbabwe, temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius since 1980, while annual rainfall has decreased by between 20 percent to 30 percent.
“Rainfall extremes have increased meaning that floods and droughts are now occurring more frequently and back-to-back within the same season… mid-season dry spells frequency has also increased,” says Professor Desmond Manatsa, the Executive Dean in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the Bindura University of Science Education (BUSE) in Zimbabwe. He added that both minimum and maximum temperatures have increased by about 1°C since the early 1980s, resulting in reduced soil moisture through evapotranspiration.
According to the Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency (ZINGSA), the country’s climate has changed so dramatically since the 1980s – mainly due to reduced rain and increased average and maximum temperatures – necessitating the redrawing of the country’s agro-ecological zone (AEZ) classification system. What especially worries ZINGSA researchers about these changes is the identification of a new zone that is so arid that it is unsuitable for the cultivation of even the best-adapted of crops.
“Not only does an average annual rainfall tend toward below 450mm, but the risk of maize harvest failure is projected at 60 percent,” the researchers pointed out. “Even with hardier traditional crops such as sorghum, millet and rapoko (finger millet), the risk is put at between 20 percent–55 percent.”
With scientists gathering evidence of the effects of climate change, even announcing before the start of the 2023-2024 farming season that the region was going to receive below-average rains, this crucial information was not used to put in place any drought mitigation and adaptation measures.
Climate literacy
As the realities of climate change become apparent, experts say this brings to the fore the importance of climate literacy in a country and on a continent that is most vulnerable to climate shocks.
A study by researchers at a South African university found climate literacy to be very low in Africa. How can current climate mitigation and adaptation efforts bear results when the local African communities are climate deniers themselves?
“We need to make more informed and transformative responses to reduce our vulnerability to climate change and boost our adaptation capabilities to handle the current and escalating impacts of climate change,” says Dr Nicholas Simpson, the lead researcher of the African climate literacy research. “But it is not easy to make informed, planned, and proactive responses to climate change without basic knowledge of its causes and consequences.”
Peter Makwanya, a climate change expert from the Zimbabwe Open University says to improve climate mitigation and adaptation in the country, it is important to improve the people’s knowledge and understanding.
“Climate disinformation is on the rise, people need correct information and use it to change their lives and that of others around them,” Makwanya says. “People need continuous awareness raising and early warning systems so that they understand the cosmos and their localities… Communities should be able to tell their own climate story based on their knowledge, understanding, and experiences. There is a need to make climate knowledge available to everyone… climate knowledge becomes toxic only when it is politicized, commodified, and personalized.”
Graveyard of good intent?
Two years ago, the government announced that it was rolling out a massive irrigation development programme covering 350,000 hectares of land. Zimbabwe’s Lands and Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka said the strategy involved incorporating 200 hectares per district in an accelerated irrigation development plan.
“A total of 350, 000 hectares to climate-proof our agriculture into the future so that we can produce sufficiently to meet our annual national needs,” Masuka told the Parliament. Other agro-parastatals were also said to have launched parallel irrigation projects, but when an El Ninõ-induced drought destroyed the 2023-24 crop, nothing was said about the results of the hyped climate-proofing efforts.
Over the years, many donor-initiated and colonial-era irrigation schemes have been abandoned in many parts of the country. Since the completion of the 1,8 million mega-litre Tugwi-Mukosi dam in 2017, its water has not been put to use as plans to irrigate 25,000 hectares of land have remained unimplemented seven years later.
Masuka did not respond to questions about the progress and results of the accelerated irrigation programme. However, the fact the country has declared a national food disaster is testimony to the reality of the situation on the ground.
Farmers shift to irrigation
However, all hope is not lost as many individual small-holder farmers have, from their own resources and further with the help of churches and non-profits, started taking up irrigation as rainfed farming is proving to be a dangerous gamble.
“I always recommend drip irrigation to most of our small-scale clients because it saves precious water by just watering the crop, not weeds,” says Mike Maruvire, a 29-year-old Zimbabwean entrepreneur and founder of irrigation start-up, Nekutenda Irrigation Engineering. His company is based in Chiredzi, an area where the ZINGSA research concluded that rainfed farming is no longer viable. “Besides, unlike with rain-fed farming in which there is no production for seven or more months of the year, with irrigation farming becomes a year-round business.”
Coster Maware, the director of Irrigation Contractors, who is also into horticultural production in the arid Masvingo province, says with irrigation, output can be increased tenfold compared to rain-fed farming.
“With irrigation, it is very possible to feed the whole country from small pieces of land… look at desert countries like Egypt, they are some of the leading exporters of food in the world because they have mastered irrigation technology,” Maware said. “Climate change is here, so we have to reconcile ourselves to the reality that irrigation is the future and the future is irrigation… you cannot have one without the other,” Maware said.
A continent-wide problem
Zimbabwe is not alone in failing to use irrigation to climate-proof its farming as this is a continent-wide problem. According to a 2018 report “Water-wise: Smart Irrigation Strategies for Africa”, by the Malabo Montpellier Panel of agricultural experts, Africa lags well behind other regions on access to irrigation as it has only 6% of its cultivated land under irrigation. This compares to 14 percent in Latin America and 37 percent in Asia.
Experts say that given that the overwhelming majority of agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa is farmed by smallholders, smaller-scale irrigation solutions ought to be prioritized.
“Those who plan should do so with small-scale farmers at the heart of their planning. They should put small-scale farmers at the center of the climate narrative,” Makwanya said.
“Smart agriculture cannot be smart if small-scale farmers lack knowledge and information about sustainable farming if they do not receive regular updates for early warning systems and climate information services for planning purposes and resilient building.”
