“In 2025, an estimated 7.6 million people, including 3.5 million children, will require urgent humanitarian assistance in Zimbabwe due to the El Niño-induced drought, a food and nutrition crisis, floods and public health emergencies.” *
We at Bread and Water for Africa® are working to help alleviate the disastrous effects of the El Niño-induced drought in Zimbabwe for our longtime partner there, the Shinga Development Trust in Mutare which operates its Lerato Children’s Home “with the specific aim of offering a quality place of safety.”
As UNICEF notes in a 2025 report, “Zimbabwe faces a complex humanitarian crisis, driven by the climate related El Niño drought, economic instability and public health emergencies that include outbreaks of cholera, polio and mpox.
“The country is facing one of the worst droughts in 40 years.”
And today, Margaret Makambira who founded Shinga in 1996 and Lerato in 2016, is facing her most serious challenge yet – how to keep the children and youth under her care fed and healthy.
“The El Niño-induced droughts that hit Zimbabwe from December 2023 up to date have caused water scarcity, which is now a major threat to food production, thus necessitating the use of water efficiently while at the same time aiming to improve productivity of land,” she reported.
“It is essential to develop sustainable and efficient methods of irrigation that minimize water consumption, conserve energy, and enhance agricultural productivity,” said Margaret.
With all this in mind, thanks to the supporters of Bread and Water for Africa®, we are working to have a solar-powered drip irrigation system installed on Shinga’s farmland.
An August 2023 article published by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) titled “Solar powered irrigation: a game-changer for small-scale farms in sub-Saharan Africa” reports that “a new study finds that standalone solar photovoltaic irrigation systems have the potential to meet more than a third of the water needs for crops in small-scale farms across sub-Saharan Africa.”
The article notes that in sub-Saharan Africa, 80 percent of agricultural production is from smallholder farmers “who face constraints on increasing farm productivity resulting in a large yield gap.
“Extensive rain-fed agriculture (90 percent of all cropland) under unpredictable and erratic rainfall pattern is a leading cause of the low productivity and food insecurity in Africa, together with a low degree of mechanization.
“This has been reinforcing a persistent poverty trap, triggered by cyclical famines that are jeopardizing local development opportunities.”
A September 2024 article in The Guardian reports that “solar power could enable 400 million Africans without water to tap into groundwater aquifers.
“It’s a truly dreadful irony: for many of the 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who lack access to even a basic water supply, there is likely to be a significant reserve in aquifers sitting just a few metres below their feet.”
And as far back as 2010, a study by the Standford University Center on Food Security and the Environment notes “Solar-powered drip irrigation systems improve diet and income in rural sub-Saharan Africa,” and adding that the systems “significantly enhance household incomes and nutritional intake of villagers in arid sub-Saharan Africa.”
The study found that solar-powered pumps installed in remote villages in the West African nation of Benin “provide a cost-effective way of delivering much-needed irrigation water, particularly during the long dry season.”
In her grant request, Margaret explained that Shinga had conducted an analysis as to how best to mitigate the challenges posed by the years-long drought.
“It was found that a drip irrigation scheme was the most befitting way, as it helps in water conservation, soil erosion reduction, increased plant health and it is not labour intensive,” she told us. “This project aims to deploy advanced technologies and management strategies to create climate-smart irrigation systems that will benefit the Home, the environment, and the community at large.”
The need is particularly critical now as Margaret reports that Shinga’s farming activities “experienced the poorest yields ever during the calendar year 2024” as a result of the droughts.
In addition to directly providing food to the children at Lerato, its “income-generating activities were affected as the fields could not produce the expected yields” and there was no surplus food to sell.
“Insufficient rainfall and prolonged dry spells negatively affect crop yields, resulting in lower productivity and compromised food security,” says Margaret.
“Crops such as maize, a staple in Zimbabwe, are particularly susceptible to drought stress, reducing yields and causing potential crop failures,” she said, adding, “the agricultural sector heavily relies on rainfall for crop production, making it particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of El Niño-induced low rainfall seasons.”
“We believe this drip irrigation project is a tool towards our long-term goal of self-sustenance,” said Margaret. “The revenue acquired from the sale of our produce should be injected back into the project to buy more chemicals and pesticides to improve on the crops varieties and even help create more projects.”
*UNICEF, 2025
