These alarming agricultural statistics in Southern Africa should prompt regional leaders to take decisive action

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There is currently a severe drought affecting a number of countries in southern Africa. Some reports say that this is the worst drought in over 100 years. The problem is that these droughts are becoming too frequent and more severe it seems. I read an article this week from a local news organization that reported that the UN World Food Programme faced challenges in raising $400 million for drought response in southern Africa. The agency has collected only a fifth of what it needs to help seven countries in the region. That article also included a very alarming statistic that should really give regional leaders sleepless nights.

The article said: “Southern Africa is experiencing its worst drought in decades, forcing Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe to declare states of emergency. The drought is a result of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which can change global weather patterns, bring extreme seasonal temperatures, rainfall or droughts and damage crop yields.”

The reason for this huge deficit and why it will continue to get worse is that almost 70% of the population of Southern Africa depends on rain-fed agriculture and their harvests have been decimated by the lack of adequate rainfall. 70% is incredibly high, especially in this changing climate environment where erratic rainfall patterns seem to be the new norm. In Malawi, for example, only 4% of agricultural land is irrigated. This is not sustainable.

This should really ring alarm bells and programs should be put in place to address this food insecurity and their implementation and acceleration. A deep look at sustainable irrigation programs that are linked to local hydrology should really be a priority. A major obstacle to this is of course the lack of access to electricity in most rural areas of the affected countries, which would be needed to power all these irrigation systems. However, technological advances over the past decade have led to a dramatic drop in the price of solar panels and the associated balance of the system.

What all this means is that there has never been a better time to get good value from distributed solar PV systems. There has been a lot of progress in solar and stationary storage, with growing market shares in many countries in the developed world. Consumers now have access to solar panels, batteries and EVs at lower prices than ever before. Solar panel prices are now so low that we are now hearing reports that It is cheaper to buy solar panels and use them to build fences in some places in Europe than to use traditional fencing materials! A fence that also generates clean electricity — how cool is that? You know what would be even cooler? Lots of distributed solar power to power vital irrigation projects to increase food security!

There needs to be more urgency from regional leaders around this issue. With the right prioritization of resources, these countries could take good steps to solve this problem, even with local resources, without necessarily having to seek external support from donor agencies. They could also partner with local private sector players and create an enabling environment that will help private sector players to solve this problem.

Extreme weather patterns resulting in severe flooding or severe droughts and heat waves are increasingly being experienced in more places around the world, not just in Southern Africa, and it seems that these extremes could pose a real threat to livelihoods in the long term. There is a real need for urgent action by regional leaders in Southern Africa in this dire situation, where the region’s overwhelming reliance on rain-fed agriculture is putting it in such a precarious food security situation.