'I've lost everything Drought fuels hunger in southern Africa

Emmanuel Himoonga paced his dry field, picking up stalks of maize that had been bleached almost to bone white. The 61-year-old chief of Shakumbila, a mainly agricultural community of about 7,000 people roughly 70 miles west of Zambia's capital, Lusaka, had seen droughts before. But since 2010 they have been happening once every three to four years, instead of every five years.

- Chiwoyu Sinyangwe Shakumbila Rachel Savage

Himoonga said he had never experienced a situation this bad before. "Every crop we planted in these fields failed," he said. "I have lost everything."

Southern Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in at least a century, with 27 million people affected and 21 million children suffering from malnutrition, according to the World Food Programme (WF P).

An unprecedented El Ninoinduced dry spell, which lasted almost two months from late January wiped out more than half the harvest in some countries.

Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have declared national disasters, while parts of Angola and Mozambique are also badly affected. The region's "lean season", where small-scale farmers have to rely on stores of food to feed themselves until the next harvest, normally runs from October to April.

However, this year it started in August, said Eric Perdison, WFP's southern Africa director.