African small-scale farmers need more than just land to survive climate change :: Mmegi Online

When drought hits a region as dry as northern Namibia, subsistence farmers can weather the crisis better if they have more than just their land to depend on for food or a source of livelihood. Many communities do better if they can rely on state support or a family member sending wages back from an urban economy. How people on the Namibian-Angolan border are coping with the current drought gives vital lessons for how small farming communities in southern Africa need many layers of support if they are to adapt to a hotter, drier climate, writes LEONIE JOUBERT*

It was cloudy and cool on the day when a team of researchers met Berina (not her real name) in the summer of 2017. She was standing near the rusty carcass of a car that was abandoned beneath the giant baobab that had become the regular gathering point in Onesi, a district capital in northern Namibia, about 25km from the Angolan border.

Berina was tall, her skin darker than the locals, her hair woven in a tightly braided spiral. She had the distinctive colourful earrings and necklace that suggested she’d come across the border from Angola. Her frame was wrapped in a blanket, and she clutched an ostrich leather purse.

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