Around 99,000 people in the Caia district, in Sofala province, central Mozambique, face food insecurity due to the impacts of the El Niño climate phenomenon, the local administrator said today.
Of the district's inhabitants, 99,347 people are in a situation of food insecurity and the majority are from the villages of Chatala and Magagade, in the administrative posts of Sena and Murassa, said Nobre dos Santos, quoted today by the public agency Rádio Moçambique (RM).
According to the administrator, the insecurity is a result of the "extreme drought" caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon, with the central government having begun providing food assistance to more than five thousand families affected by the crisis.
"However, there are still many people to be assisted, many people in need because support is not reaching the entire needy population," he said.
Nobre dos Santos also points to the destruction of agricultural areas by wild animals as one of the aggravating factors for the increase in pockets of hunger in that district.
"The population complains about the existence of a hippopotamus that, at night, has been devastating crops. So, we have this problem with animals throughout our state," he concluded.
On Sunday, the director of district economic activities services in the Chibabava district, still in Sofala province, said that around 32,000 families in the district face food insecurity due to the impacts of the El Niño climate phenomenon.
"At the moment, we have around 32,000 families in a situation of food insecurity who live off remittances and the sale of small animals. The most affected area is the Goonda administrative post, which is our breadbasket in terms of cereal production," said Hélder Alberto.
According to him, the local government has already started to assist around 4,100 families affected by drought, mainly those in the administrative post of Goonda, in the district of Chibabava.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recently estimated that around 4.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Mozambique, with US$64 million (€60.6 million) needed to meet the needs.
"The multiple crises currently affecting Mozambique - conflict, drought and public health emergencies - are straining humanitarian resources. Some 4.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance (10% of whom are people with disabilities), including 3.4 million children," said a Unicef statement.
In September last year, the United Nations (UN) announced that nearly two million people need humanitarian assistance in the country.
"This year, Mozambique has been affected by drought induced by the El Niño phenomenon during the 2023-2024 season. It is estimated that around 1.8 million people could face food insecurity between next October and March 2025. Given this situation, the need for humanitarian assistance for affected communities has increased, especially in the central and southern regions of Mozambique," the organization explained.
Mozambique is considered one of the countries most severely affected by global climate change, cyclically facing floods and tropical cyclones during the rainy season, which runs from October to April.
El Niño is a change in atmospheric dynamics caused by an increase in ocean temperatures. This meteorological phenomenon is also causing torrential rains in East Africa, which have already caused hundreds of deaths in several countries, such as Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Somalia and Ethiopia.
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