Malawi Lacks Money to Fund its El Niño Plans

Hundreds of farmers were gathered under the village’s biggest wild mango tree, summoned by the chief, when the government workers arrived with a dire warning. Drought was soon likely to hit. The farmers had better prepare. The cause, they said, is this year’s extraordinarily powerful El Niño, a global weather phenomenon born in the Pacific Ocean, half a world away from their village of Namasoko, Malawi, in southern Africa. If the farmers bought special drought-resistant seeds, they might be able to avoid hunger and financial despair.

But a single bag costs $43. And most farmers make less than $3 per day. “What are we to do?” asked Patrick Hareke, 46, one of the farmers. It’s a question being asked across the developing world. Preparing for El Niño is daunting even in good times. The natural phenomenon scrambles global weather in ways that are both predictable and economically devastating. It typically causes droughts in Latin America and southern Africa that hit one group above all: poor farmers who are at the mercy of the skies.

Image In Phalombe, a district in southern Malawi, 2023’s Cyclone Freddy displaced more than one quarter of its 430,000 people. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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