By Dickson Bandera
The United Kingdom has injected an additional £500,000 into Zimbabwe’s drought preparedness programme, targeting more than 97,000 people in five districts considered vulnerable to the anticipated effects of El Niño.
The additional funding from the British Embassy in Harare brings the United Kingdom’s total contribution to START Ready’s anticipatory drought response in Zimbabwe to £1.27 million.
The programme covers Beitbridge, Mwenezi, Gwanda, Matobo and Masvingo, with interventions focused on helping communities prepare for drought before its effects escalate into a humanitarian crisis.
The support will include improved access to water, climate-smart agricultural inputs and training, livestock support and other drought-preparedness measures aimed at protecting household livelihoods.
The funding is part of a wider UK commitment of up to £15 million through its Humanitarian Crisis Fund to support anticipatory action in countries facing heightened risks from El Niño.
Rather than waiting for drought, floods or other extreme weather events to cause widespread losses before humanitarian assistance is provided, the UK says the programme is designed to use forecasts and early-warning information to trigger support before communities are pushed into crisis.
UK Minister for Development Kirsty McNeill said the increasing frequency and impact of climate shocks made early intervention necessary.
“The climate crisis isn’t something that’s round the corner – it’s already here and people need our help right now,” McNeill said.
She said climate-related shocks could affect countries beyond their borders through their impact on food supplies, economies and household costs.
“That is why acting early matters, helping people in vulnerable communities prepare before disaster strikes so we can save lives and reduce suffering,” she said.
The UK Government said around 35 percent of humanitarian shocks can be predicted in advance, but less than one percent of global humanitarian funding is currently allocated to anticipatory action.
The British Government argues that investing before a crisis develops can reduce both humanitarian suffering and the eventual cost of emergency response.
Under the broader programme, anticipatory interventions could include vaccinating livestock before drought conditions take hold, strengthening homes before floods and providing cash to farming families so they can purchase essential supplies and protect their livelihoods.
For Zimbabwe, the immediate focus is on strengthening resilience among communities in the five targeted districts.
START Network, through which the Zimbabwe intervention is being implemented, is a network of civil society organisations and NGOs working to improve humanitarian assistance, protect livelihoods and reduce the effects of disasters.
The Zimbabwe funding comes as the UK expands its wider preparations for the potential effects of El Niño in vulnerable regions.
The Humanitarian Crisis Fund support will cover drought-prone areas of southern Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, alongside flood-affected areas of East Africa and South America.
The UK is also seeking to strengthen the science and financial systems underpinning anticipatory action. It said a new partnership between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the UK Met Office will expand access to AI-powered weather forecasting and early-warning systems.
The British Government is also working with multilateral development banks and the United Nations humanitarian system to increase the use of pre-arranged financing, allowing resources to be mobilised ahead of or immediately after a forecast shock.
The announcement comes against growing attention to Zimbabwe’s vulnerability to drought and erratic rainfall, particularly in rural communities dependent on rain-fed agriculture and livestock.
Recent drought-preparedness interventions in Beitbridge have similarly focused on moving from post-disaster relief towards early action, including drought-tolerant agricultural inputs, water infrastructure, livestock support and climate information.
The latest UK intervention therefore places emphasis not only on responding to food insecurity after it emerges, but on giving vulnerable households resources and information to reduce potential losses before a drought reaches its most damaging stage.
The UK said evidence from previous anticipatory-action programmes demonstrates the potential value of this approach. It cited studies indicating that proactive drought responses in the Horn of Africa could have prevented an estimated US$2.5 billion in lost incomes and assets.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs representative Lisa Doughten said humanitarian agencies needed to move towards anticipating risks rather than waiting for disasters to unfold.
“In a world of increasing climate and humanitarian risks, we need to move from reacting to getting ahead of them,” Doughten said.
For Zimbabwe, the additional £500,000 means the START Ready programme now has a total UK contribution of £1.27 million to deploy in the five targeted districts, with the stated objective of helping more than 97,000 people prepare for drought before the humanitarian consequences become more severe.