Ingenuity helps Zimbabwe weather drought - and US aid cuts

• Last year's drought hit harvests hard
• US aid cuts deepen challenge of climate change
• Zimbabwe seeks home-grown solutions to water shortages

HWANGE - Last year, Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park fed villagers who were starved by drought with elephants they had culled to reduce overpopulation.

This year, the nearby community of Mabale is banking on rain-harvesting to help locals grow enough food, using chicken wire, canvas and cement to get through the extreme weather that has become Zimbabwe's new norm.   

President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a state of disaster last April because of the drought and climate experts say this kind of extreme weather is only going to get worse. 

"Zimbabwe is a country highly affected by climate change, and looking ahead, science tells us that the situation is likely to become worse," said Mattias Söderberg, global climate lead at DanChurchAid, a Danish humanitarian organisation.

In 2024, Zimbabwe was hit by southern Africa's worst drought in 40 years. Harvests failed and water reserves dried up in a country where 70% of people rely on subsistence agriculture.        

The unprecedented drought was fuelled by El Niño, a climate phenomenon that can exacerbate drought or storms - weather that is made more likely by climate change.    

Last year, the United Nations said Zimbabwe was among 18 locations that risked a "firestorm of hunger" absent aid. 

But now aid has been heavily cut worldwide after President Donald Trump gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on taking office this year.    

U.S. funding supported a range of projects in Zimbabwe in agriculture, health and food security.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has received termination notices for more than 100 programmes, with Africa the worst hit, a Rome-based spokesperson said via email.

It couldn't come at a worse time for Zimbabwe, as it counts the cost of its latest drought - and readies for the next one.    

"Without funding, important efforts to increase resilience, and to adapt to the effects of climate change, may never become reality," Söderberg said.    

Layiza Mudima, a 49-year-old mother from Mapholisa village in Mabale, about 2 km (1.24 miles) northeast of the park, said her community was facing "a severe water challenge".

Around Hwange, last year's drought dried up the boreholes and waterholes, threatening wildlife in the park and depriving people in Mabale of drinking water.

And although rainfall from December to February this year was normal or above, fallout from the last drought persists.

"Despite this year's rains, we had to close one of our boreholes," Mudima said, explaining how water table levels were still very low. 

"Because there are too many people in my village and not enough boreholes, people walk 5 km to a neighbouring village with a solar borehole," she said, referring to a borehole pumped by solar power. 

Faced with these recurrent water crises, people in Hwange have started building rainwater tanks, helped by the Soft Foot Alliance, a community-based trust registered in Zimbabwe.     

Constance Ndaba, 75, who lives in Masikili Village 2, said the tank harvesting system saves her walking 2 km to the next village.

"For a family of seven, drinking water from the rainwater tank lasts us up to three months. I'm not sure when I last went to fetch water from a borehole."    

Self-sufficiency

Rainwater is collected in giant jars made by moulding canvas and chicken wire around sand. A thin cement plaster fixes the form, then the inside is plastered. The jars are placed near house walls to collect run-off from the roof. 

Their simplicity makes for an easy upkeep - a key benefit in remote communities. 

"We use chicken wire, plain wire, four bags of cement and 24 buckets of river sand which is locally available. To build the jar tank takes four days and it can collect up to five drums of water, which can last up to three months," said Austin Nkomo, one of the builders of jar tanks based in Hwange. 

Msungwe Sithole, a creative facilitator at the Soft Foot Alliance, said the project aimed to build resilience to drought and help people live sustainably in a depleted landscape.

Erratic rains are not the only reason for water scarcity, said Chipo Mpofu-Zuze, manager for the Environmental Management Agency in the Matabeleland North province.

Mpofu-Zuze said deforestation, crop-growing along streams, poor farming methods, alien species invading wetlands and the release of effluent into local waters were also responsible.

Simba Guzha, regional project manager with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) Zimbabwe, trains farmers to adapt to the increasingly hot and dry conditions.

VSO is working with smallholders in the eastern provinces to improve productivity while safeguarding the environment - helping them stay safe from any shock drops in aid.

"Most of the farmers who have been trained on infiltration pits, earth dams, and rooftop water harvesting systems are now using these systems even without any foreign support," he said.

(Reporting by Lungelo Ndhlovu; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths)