Chipata, 23 November, 2019 / 1:52 am (ACI Africa).
Following months of unpredictable rainfall and increased temperatures in Southern Africa including Zambia that have led to a drought described as one of the worst in decades, a Church leader in Zambia has appealed for help terming the situation in the landlocked country as serious.
“We have nothing. We are in dire need of help. The southern part of Zambia was our granary because people in the south were good farmers and were doing a lot but now the people are moving towards the North because there is nothing, it is dry,” the Chairman of Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB) Bishop George Lungu of Chipata diocese told ACI Africa in an interview Thursday, November 21.
According to the Bishop, while climate change is not something new to the country, drastic changes in the weather pattern has led to the current crisis where “animals are dying because of thirst; no water, people are going up and down looking for food.”
Zambia’s rich maize - growing southern area has been hit hard by the drought with the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warning that from October 2019 to March 2020, 2.3 million people (24% of the rural population) will be facing severe food insecurity, Associated Press reported.
In June this year, Zambian Bishops called on the country’s government to declare a hunger crisis, a call that Bishop Lungu says was not adhered to.
