Cattle among drought victims. Credit: Kagiso Onkatswitse

By Baboki Kayawe
GABORONE, BOTSWANA, Nov 24 2015 (IPS)

A perfect storm of lower rainfall and a growing population beckons for Botswana. But others find climate change is already in the fields and paddocks. “As climate change ushers in more stress on the water sector, it is increasingly a concern that losses in rangeland productivity will result in food insecurity, especially in rural areas,” a country analysis report unveiled recently on Botswana states.

Far from the airy conference rooms where such reports are typically shared, are thousands of subsistence farmers – growing crops mainly to feed their families – for whom these words come to life in the fields and the paddocks of Botswana every harvest season.

For these farmers, the national ideals of poverty eradication and sustainable development are slipping ever further out of reach. Bathalefhi Seoroka, 65, is a subsistence farmer in Boteti, one of Botswana’s drier areas located in the central region. She mostly grows maize, sorghum, beans and melons on her six-hectare field.

Seoroka has noticed her crops have been failing because of declining rainfall since 2010. “Weather patterns have drastically changed,” she says. “I don’t know how we will be able to survive under such dry conditions.”

Another farmer, Kgasane Tsele accuses the government of responding too slowly to the 2014-2015 drought, which was declared early in June. “This is really scary for us as farmers and we eagerly wait to see how government will respond,” he says. “By now government should have announced how it is going to help farmers in alleviating the impact of this drought. The response team must always be on alert and respond early.”

The Department of Meteorological Services predicts the southeastern part of Botswana – which is already suffering from drought and water shortages – is poised to experience its driest season in 34 years.

To cope with food shortage risks, the Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board (BAMB) ordered 1,000 tons of yellow maize from South Africa, and an additional 10,000 tons of white maize is due to arrive soon.

BAMB spokesperson, Kushata Modiakgotla says strategic grain reserves currently stand at 30,000 tons of sorghum and 3,000 tons of cowpeas left, but there is no maize. “BAMB has started the process of buying 5,000 tons of white maize from Zambia and it is exploring other avenues to import an additional 5,000 tons if necessary,” she states.

Imports from both nations would help meet supply as local reserves are under threat, while yellow maize is used to produce animal feed. The government insists consumers are not in any danger of going hungry as more than 90 percent of the maize consumed in Botswana is sourced by local millers from South Africa. But despite the supply contracts, consumers will have to pay more for maize meal the longer drought persists.

Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) chief executive Akolang Tombale says climate risks also present challenges to beef production and exports. “We are just emerging from a very dry season and if another drought is forecast it is a problematic state as production will be reduced,” he explains. Grasslands and pasture are an important resource for Batswana who derive most of their livelihood from livestock.

The majority of the BMC’s throughput starts at natural pastures, before being prepared with feedstock. Tombale is holding out hope for showers to replenish pastures around the country, but he acknowledges this may not be a long-term solution.

BMC has been receiving higher rates of deliveries than usual this year, since the Ministry of Agriculture advised farmers to destock as means of cutting their losses. However, this is a short-lived gain because if the situation persists in the next raining cycle, beef revenues would be badly affected. The BMC is now urging farmers to change their approach from quantity to quality-based cattle production.

President Ian Khama recently urged farmers to adopt more innovative approaches to their work in order to cope with the impacts of climate change. Speaking at the 2015 National Agricultural Show ‘Practicing Smart Agriculture to Combat the Effect of Climate Change’, he pointed to Israel, where farmers have harnessed new technologies in order to maintain production in highly water stressed environments.

“This ravaging drought we are currently experiencing is an opportunity to be innovative and resort to new methods and technologies to produce under such conditions. It is for this reason that farming methods such as conservation agriculture are promoted,” he said.

Recommendations include using improved crop varieties that are drought tolerant and high yielding, investing in breeds that can withstand the current climate, as well as adoption of proper crop husbandry practices though agricultural infrastructure. Lare Sisay, United Nations Development Programme’s deputy resident representative, predicts water shortages will lead to an increase in undesirable types of grass species.

“This has a far-reaching impact on social and economic sectors, and this has not yet been quantified and factored into the country’s economic projections,” he says. He predicts this could derail Botswana’s efforts to break through its middle-income country status.

Parliamentarians – many of whose constituents are rural and peri-urban populations involved in communal farming – are expected to tackle the climate change policy, once it appears in the National Assembly. The policy is due in the November sitting and already momentum is gathering from activists to ensure robust debate and urgent approval.

This story was sourced through the Voices2Paris UNDP storytelling contest on climate change and developed thanks to Jessica Shankleman from @BusinessGreen.

Indigenous people who were displaced from the Zambezi Valley almost six decades ago for the construction of the Kariba Dam say they have not benefited from the development they made way for. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Baboki Kayawe
LUSITU, Zambia, Mar 26 2013 (IPS)

Indigenous people who were displaced from the Zambezi Valley almost six decades ago for the construction of the Kariba Dam say they have not benefited from the development they made way for.

The building of the Kariba hydroelectric dam was supposed to usher in a bright future for the people of Zambia and Zimbabwe who gave up their land for its construction.

Unfortunately, that future was for others and not the displaced and their descendants. Most of the villages to which some 57,000 people from both southern African nations were relocated are still not electrified.

Sixty-nine-year-old Samson Nyowani was 15 when he was moved from his home in Chipepu, where the Kariba Dam now lies, to Sitikwi village in Zambia’s Lusitu district some 60 kilometres away. Sitikwi village, Nyowani says, still has no electricity, and the soil is infertile.

“We do not have power here in Sitikwi, and the schools and clinic are not electrified, which is a sad situation after what we were made to undergo during the mass relocation,” he tells IPS.

“They, the (British) colonial government, had promised to provide electricity in our houses and we demanded that, despite our homesteads being grass thatched,” says Nyowani.

Though he was a teenager then, he narrates the story as if it happened this morning. The old man at least expects the current government to do something about the situation.

However, the current democratic government did not promise the same thing.

The acting district administrative officer at the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit in Siyavonga, Hope Mpundu, says they are aware of the challenges facing the displaced communities. She adds that the government provides them with food aid and supports them with irrigation schemes.

“More should have been done for them as people who lived in this area before they were relocated, but they were pushed to those areas which are not good enough,” she tells IPS, conceding that the area they were moved to is drier than where they used to live.

Subsistence crop production is hard for the 3,000 people who settled in Sitikwi because the land is marginal. The area is also very hot which results in low harvests of maize and some indigenous vegetables.

“The yields are very low and only enough to feed our families from one harvest season to the next, which means that when the following year rains are minimal, people go hungry,” Nyowani says.

Frank Mudimba, a spokesperson for Basilwizi Trust, a non-governmental organisation lobbying for reparations to be paid to those who were displaced, says the Zambian government initiated the Gwembe Valley Development Programme, which targets communities affected by the construction of the dam.

He tells IPS that clinics, irrigation schemes, and dams were built and chiefs’ homes were electrified. However, he adds, funding for the programme stopped during the days of President Frederick Chiluba. “That stopped expansion, but whatever was established during the time the programme was running is still working, being run by the communities.” He adds that the Zimbabwean government undertook no such programme.

Like Nyowani, many other residents of Sitikwi are eager to see electricity in their village. The vice-headman in the area, Langson Mulungu, is not pleased that they have failed to reap the benefits of being relocated to make way for the massive hydropower plant.

“I am not happy that they didn’t give us electricity here, and instead electrified other neighbouring villages. Also, promises for irrigation schemes are not yet fulfilled,” Mulungu says.

Madam Siankusule was only eight when her parents were moved from Chipepu to Lusitu. She is told that in Chipepu the locals irrigated their crops and, coupled with fertile soils, harvests were good.

Now they have to contend with droughts. “I remember the drought in 1995 when the community suffered and food aid was brought in,” she tells IPS.

She usually sells chickens and at times tomatoes to make ends meet.

She agrees with Mulungu and Nyowani that their village should be electrified. Siankusule says preference should be given to schools because power is invaluable in those institutions.

Elizabeth Karonga, the public relations and communications manager for the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), tells IPS that the then colonial government was more concerned about the welfare of wild animals than about the indigenous people. “Operation Noah” was launched to physically move animals from the area that was going to be flooded by the dam water.

She says the authorities did not provide for the 57,000 people displaced from both the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides. Save for some of the men who were engaged as labourers in the dam construction, the locals did not benefit from the project.

“Although ZRA was not in existence at the time, we have realised that the relocation was done haphazardly as no provisions were made to ensure that these people who were dependant on the water for survival adapted to a new livelihood,” says Karonga.

In 1997, ZRA established the Zambezi Valley Development Fund (ZVDF) as part of its corporate social responsibility policy.

“We felt obliged to do something for these people, and the fund, into which a percentage of the revenue that ZRA is paid from the Zambia Electricity Corporation and Zimbabwe Power Corporation, is an attempt to help those who were displaced,” Karonga says.

The projects include irrigation schemes, grinding mills and laboratories and classroom blocks at schools. However, the authorities at ZRA are not sure whether the beneficiaries of these projects are those who were displaced or their descendants.

In addition, Karonga says though they work with local government officials in both countries to recommend people who need assistance, the current projects benefit only those who live around the listed ZVDF areas. These are Lisutu, Nkandababbwe, Nkolongoza, in Zambia and Nyamhunga, Gatche Gatche and Mlibizi in Zimbabwe.

Karonga says ZRA will be investing in projects that have a long-term impact for the displaced communities, and is considering building a clinic.

Nyowani knows he cannot go back to where his forefathers were moved. But he wishes the authorities would do more to make their lives more comfortable. Electrifying his village would be a good start.

*Additional reporting by Ish Mafundikwa in Harare.