Africa Faces Worst Drought in Half a Century

Drought is devastating some of Africa’s poorest countries, threatening water supplies, power generation and agriculture. Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland have declared states of emergency. But some nations, like Ethiopia, are in denial about the impact of the abnormal sea and air patterns known as El Niño and the continent’s inability to handle population growth. Ethiopia’s population has more than doubled to 102 million since 1985, and agricultural production fails to keep up with that growth. Rural populations rely on subsistence farming on state-owned land, while the government focuses on an industrialization policy, writes Bartholomäus Grill for Spiegel Online – “one that includes the leasing of giant farmlands to foreign agricultural companies which then export foodstuffs in grand fashion from the country at a time when it must import hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat in order to compensate for the crop losses caused by the drought.” One third of the population is considered malnourished, and famine could soon become a chronic problem. – YaleGlobal