According to the UN, more than 500,000 people – a quarter of Lesotho’s population – face severe hunger due to droughts that caused a 60% fall in cereal production last year, compared with 2018.
At least 71,000 people in rural areas are “one step away from famine”, says Jens Laerke, spokesperson from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Rural areas have been hit as massive fall in food production causes severe hunger for a quarter of country’s population.“We can’t plant any crops in this drought situation. The rains only came last December and everything we had planted had wilted. We have no livestock left to sell or exchange for grain. So, unless we get help, we are just going to starve,” says Tšepo Molapo whose children all died at illegal mines in neighbouring South Africa, where they had trekked in search of work. He relies on a monthly government pension payout of about $48 (£37) but the paltry amount cannot feed him and the eight grandchildren he cares for on his own following the death of his wife. “I do not know how I am going to survive with my grandchildren.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/30/drought-leaves-tens-of-thousands-in-lesotho-one-step-from-famine
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