Executive Summary
Southern Africa’s unprecedented El Niño-related drought and weather-related stress has triggered a second shock-year of hunger and hardship for poor and vulnerable people with serious consequences that will persist until at least until the next harvest in 2017. Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe have all declared states of emergency due to El Niño-induced drought, as have seven of South Africa’s nine provinces. Mozambique declared a Red Alert, the highest level of national emergency preparedness, in the central and southern provinces.
The exceptional lack of precipitation, compounded by the impact of poor rainfall in previous years, has resulted in significant rain-fed yield losses, below-average irrigated crops, poor pasture conditions and high cattle mortalities. South Africa and Zambia, the usual maize surplus countries, have significantly reduced crop estimates, which will necessitate huge imports into the region. This follows a 2014-2015 agricultural season that was similarly characterized by hot, dry conditions and a 23 percent drop in regional cereal production.
In the 2014/15 lean season, some 32 million people were food insecure in the Southern Africa region – approximately 10 percent of the population – largely as a result of the drought which led to a poor harvest last year.1 Updated estimates for the numbers of food insecure people for most countries in the region, following the conclusion of the 2016 national vulnerability assessments conducted by governments in partnership with key United Nations agencies and non-governmental organisations stand are estimated by the Southern African Develeopment Community to stand at 39 million. Food and nutrition security will begin deteriorating by July in worst-affected areas, reaching peak levels between December 2016 and March 2017. Combined with some of the world’s highest HIV rates, this is likely to lead to a further deterioration of the already poor nutrition situation in the region.
In addition, there is a 70 percent likelihood that La Niña, generally associated with above average rainfall in many areas of Southern Africa, will occur by December 2016 particularly in the southern half of the region. While helping to reduce water deficits that have accumulated over the last two seasons, La Niña could also result in flooding in some flood-prone parts of the region, necessitating the incorporation of flood scenarios into contingency plans.
Given the scale of the El Niño response and La Niña potential, preparedness and response mechanisms are being scaled up at the regional level as well as in different countries supported by various partners and key stakeholders. On 15 March 2016, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Council of Ministers approved the declaration of a regional drought emergency and approved the creation of a regional Logistics Coordination Centre to coordinate the immediate response. Since then, WFP, together with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have been working with the SADC Secretariat to analyse data being received from member states on the projected impact of the drought, and agree on priority technical support required.
On 26 May 2016, SADC announced the establishment of the SADC El Niño Response Team (including the logistics cell). UN partners supporting the cell include FAO, OCHA, UNICEF and WHO, and WFP will provide support in food and nutrition security analysis and logistics coordination and information management.
WFP launched a two-month regional Immediate Response-PREP 200979 (May 2016 – July 2016) in order to provide timely technical support to the SADC Response Team. This Special Operation 200993 will succeed the IRPREP and cover additional requirements, including support to member states to enhance assessments and real-time monitoring as well as surge capacity in emergency preparedness and response at the regional bureau level. This Special Operation has a duration of ten months (mid-June 2016 – mid-April 2017) and a total budget of US$ 2,167,392.