Chronicle Editor
Sadc climate experts, who met in Harare from Monday to Wednesday, delivered very welcome news for a region, which is suffering the impact of what some reports have said was its worst drought in a century.
The bloc’s executive secretary, Mr Elias Magosi, speaking at the Sadc Summit on August 17 said, following the drought, about 17 percent of the region’s population, or 68 million people, is in need of urgent food aid. In May, Sadc launched a regional appeal for $5 billion to provide immediate life-saving assistance to the hungry and their longer-term resilience to the ever-changing climate.
Happily, on Wednesday, the weather dons, concluding the 29th Southern Africa Regional Climate Outlook Forum (Sarcof-29), said the region is set to receive normal-to-above normal rainfall over the October 2024 to March 2025 wet season.
The forum said our country is likely to experience normal-to-below normal rainfall from October to December this year and normal-to-above normal rainfall from January to March next year.
This broad prognosis applies to central DRC, northern Zambia, eastern Malawi, Tanzania and parts of Mozambique as well.
“The period January to March 2025 is expected to have normal-to-above normal rainfall for most of the region except for, the south-western fringes of South Africa, south-eastern and western most of DRC, north-western Angola, Tanzania, northern Zambia, northern Malawi, northern Mozambique and central western tip of Madagascar where normal-to-below normal rains are expected, including Comoros and Seychelles,” said the Sarcof-29 release.
If, as we expect, the season turns out as projected, this would be a welcome respite given the extreme suffering that our people are enduring following the drought this year. They would be able to grow their own food instead of going hungry and waiting for well-wishers to hand out life-saving food to them.
Speaking more broadly, Sadc economies would recover because, instead of spending resources on feeding the masses, they would, instead, channel them to other development priorities.
Zooming in on our country, we are encouraged by the timely positive forecast. It gives the Government and farmers a window to plan early to be better able to execute that plan over the next seven months.
As we await the more detailed national projection, which is released soon after the regional one, we note that Sarcof-29 said there is a likelihood of normal-to-below normal rainfall in the first three months of the season and normal-to-above normal rainfall in the second.
This tells our farmers to be more diligent in their plantings bearing in mind that the initial phase of the season might be not that good. They can spread their plantings across the season so they can get the most out of it. They can sow with the first rains while aiming to be able to plant early maturing varieties, perhaps in late December into January.
In terms of livestock well-being, we are confident that the season will bring enough moisture to revive pastures and water sources for the animals across 2025.
However, let us remember that January disease and other livestock diseases, thrive in wet conditions as projected. We urge farmers to vaccinate their animals now, particularly cattle so they are healthy to fight infections over the wet season.
Online Reporter