Drought threatens millions of children as school dropouts rise and hunger strikes in southern Africa
Mudzi, Zimbabwe — It’s Tuesday morning and Talent, 5, should be at school. Instead, he’s out foraging for the fruit his family relies on for food now that the crops have wilted in the heat.
Whether it is the El Niño phenomenon, which has altered the global climate for more than a year, or the broader problem of climate change affecting the African continent, the region most vulnerable to it, the blame lies with the boy. The boy’s grandmother, Winnie Chihota, knows she is witnessing the disappearance of part of a generation.
For many people in rural Mudzi District, northeastern Zimbabwe, crops mean survival. If they fail, their futures can suffer too. Without an income, it is impossible to pay the $25 needed for school fees or uniforms. Two of Chihota’s children are at risk of dropping out of school. Little Talent never had the chance to start.
The lack of harvest also means that children have nothing to eat for lunch, even if they manage to get to class.
“Recently, a child fainted at school from hunger,” Chihota says, sorting through fruit that Talent and other children brought home. The fruit will be dried for future meals. Many families now eat only one solid meal of corn or sorghum a day.
Children are at greatest risk from natural disasters as the El Niño phenomenon brought some of the hottest days in decades to parts of southern and eastern Africa. It also caused some of the worst flooding in history.
It has destroyed many small agricultural plots that provided families with a livelihood. More than 60% of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people live in rural areas where agriculture is the main source of food and income.
Hunger is the number one concern. In Zimbabwe, 580,000 children are at risk of malnutrition, according to the UN children’s agency, as the effects of El Niño worsen a humanitarian crisis marked by economic hardship and outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.
The most serious problem is children’s education. School has become a luxury. Children drop out of school to work. Adolescent girls are forced to skip school because there is not enough water to wash during their periods, or because they have to stay home to look after their siblings while their parents go looking for work. Some girls are forced to marry to ease their financial burden, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
Aid agencies say the crisis is dwarfed by others in countries such as Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, meaning donor funding may be hard to come by.
“There needs to be a sense of urgency,” said Yves Willemot, UNICEF spokesperson for Zimbabwe.
Drought is jeopardizing the education of nearly 2 million children in Zimbabwe, with some dropping out of school permanently and others forced to miss classes, the U.N. humanitarian agency said. More than 45,000 children dropped out of school during the previous El Niño in the 2015-16 growing season, 3,000 more than the annual average, it said. The government is still compiling figures from this latest El Niño.
Countries in the region, also devastated by extreme weather events, face similar challenges. In Malawi, which has been hit by a vicious cycle of flooding and drought for three years, fewer children are attending school. In some schools, half of the students are absent, according to a report released in May by local and international aid organizations, including Malawi-based Youth Net and Counseling.
“Families are faced with a choice between feeding their children and sending them to school,” the report said. Volunteer teachers are no longer there in some schools, “further deteriorating the quality of education.”
Neighbouring Zambia uses a school feeding programme targeting more than 2 million children to increase school attendance.
Zimbabwe recently launched a similar programme due to concerns about increased absenteeism and dropout rates caused by drought, said Taungana Ndoro, director of communications and advocacy at the Ministry of Education.
“The assurance of at least one decent hot meal a day has been a strong incentive for families to prioritise sending their children to school,” he said.
It may be too late for many of those dropping out of school, especially girls, said Nyaradzo Mashayamombe, an activist and founder of Tag a Life, an organisation whose #everychildinschool campaign is pushing to end school fees for children from poor families.
“When drought hits like this, the immediate defense is marriage. The mere proposition of a way out, of an escape, can be very seductive to a girl or even to her parents,” she said, adding that many find themselves trapped by older, abusive husbands.
“There is no way out,” she said. “It takes away their potential, their dreams are shattered and the cycle of poverty continues.”
