SALIMA, Malawi, Sept 9, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields.

"Our situation is very dire; we are starving," said 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins.

"Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food," she said.

Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils up the unpalatable yams known locally as mpama.

"It is a root that grows in the wild which we dig up so that the kids can at least have something to eat for the day," Levison said.

"People have died or fallen sick from eating this, so you have to make sure that it cooks for a really long time, all the time replacing the cooking water so as to remove the poison."

The rains stopped in this part of Malawi in April and the crops burnt in the fields, Levison said.

The next harvest is due in March, said the headman of the village of 1,000 people about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of the capital Lilongwe.

"People here are distressed because of hunger and the situation is really desperate," Samuel Benjamin said.

- Dependent on rain -

Malawi is one of the world's poorest countries and most of its people depend on rain-fed agriculture for food.

This year's drought, exacerbated by the El Nino weather phenomenon, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi's crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million, the World Food Programme (WFP) has said.

About 5.7 million people will need help to get enough to eat between October and March, according to Malawi's Department of Disaster Management Affairs.

The situation is equally dire around 250 kilometres south of Salima in the Chikwawa area, near the commercial capital Blantyre.

"In a good year, we usually harvest 21 bags of maize," said 72-year-old villager Wyson Malonda. "But this year we harvested absolutely nothing."

"However, we did not give up. We planted drought-resistant millet but that too did not yield," he said.

His wife, Mainesi Malonda, 68, says villagers here and in the entire Shire Valley region have resorted to eating a wild water lily tuber known as nyika.

These tubers are not toxic, but grow in crocodile-infested areas along the Shire River.

- 'Catastrophic' -

The drought slashed this year's maize crop in Malawi by 23 percent from that of last year, WFP country director Paul Turnbull told AFP.

It is the third consecutive year of poor harvest after damage caused by Tropical Storm Anna in 2022 and Cyclone Freddy in 2023.

Impacts of El Nino include a 40 percent increase in moderate cases of acute malnutrition in children aged under five and a 23 percent increase in severe cases, the WFP said in its July brief.

President Lazarus Chakwera appealed for $200 million in food aid in March when he declared a state of natural disaster in 23 of Malawi's 28 districts because of the drought.
 
"It would have been catastrophic even if this were the first disaster in recent years," Chakwera said.

The disaster management department is using government and international aid to buy and distribute maize to affected communities in a programme that will cost about $1.1 million, said director Charles Kalemba.

"We will also do cash transfers to the affected communities from mid-September starting with the most affected districts," he told AFP.

Five countries in southern Africa have declared a state of national disaster over the El Nino-induced dry spell -- a disaster affecting at least 27 million people in a region where many rely on agriculture to survive, according to the WFP.