Namibia looks to help from China and India, desalination for Windhoek amid historic drought
UN estimates 48% of Namibia's population is food insecure
A lack of rain has seen Namibia's national food reserves drop to an all-time low of 16%.
Rice from China, millet from India, 640 wild animals slaughtered for game meat and purifying sea water are some of the stopgap measures Namibia is planning as it faces its worst drought in a century.Already one of the driest places in the world, the lack of rain has seen Namibia's national food reserves drop to an all-time low of 16%, and jobs are at risk in an economy about one-quarter of which is made up of agriculture.
If the rains don't come by October, "there could be disaster," agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein told News24, and not even the capital will be safe.
"We are working on sourcing water from as far as 400 km to supply Windhoek," he said, and the government is pushing ahead with plans for a desalination plant.
Food insecurity alarming
Last week, the United Nations launched an urgent appeal for help in Namibia's deepening hunger crisis. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that some 48% of Namibia's population is food insecure, the highest in the region.
The agriculture, water and land reform ministry called on the government to declare the drought a national emergency in April, and President Nangolo Mbumba did so in May.
The UN is "deeply alarmed" by what it has seen since. Some communities have lost their crops and are on the verge of losing their livestock for a lack of pasture, said Reena Ghelani, the UN assistant secretary-general and climate crisis coordinator for the El Niño/La Niña Response, after visiting hunger hotspot Omaheke, where a tenth of the population is considered at risk of acute starvation.
The United States has announced a R90 million additional humanitarian assistance package for Namibia for "life-saving food assistance and nutrition support to the most vulnerable Namibian children and their carers."
Subsistence farmers have been hard hit, and Schlettwein said the government was working on ways to assist farmers for the coming season, assuming the rains return.
"Government will work on providing them with seed because a great deal of them ate their seeds when hunger struck. We will also [provide] subsidised fertiliser," he said.
"While we work on this, there are also projects for food provision in affected communities."
-NEWS24
*The News24 Africa Desk is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation. The stories produced through the Africa Desk and the opinions and statements that may be contained herein do not reflect those of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.