By Catherine Tembo:
In Dame Village, Malawi, the sound of water no longer means life—it means struggle. Every morning, 45-year-old Nasimita Lingilirani joins a weary procession of women and children armed with buckets, jerrycans, and fading hope.
They gather around the village’s only borehole, praying it still has a few reluctant drops left to give. On many days, it doesn’t.
“When it dries, we have no choice but to scoop from shallow wells,” she tells me, her eyes darting toward the dusty ground. “But the water makes us sick. Still, what else can we do? Without it, we die.”
This isn’t just about thirst. It’s about survival. Across Malawi—and much of Africa—the climate crisis has left families gasping not only for water, but for dignity, health, and food. Fields lie barren, livestock waste away, and hunger hovers like an unwelcome shadow over communities already stretched to the breaking point.
Researched and published by New Delhi (India)-based fortnightly Down To Earth and the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the State of Africa’s Environment 2025 draws on investigative reportage by African journalists and was released at a communicators’ and journalists’ briefing organised with the Alliance for Science–Ethiopia and the Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (MESHA), Kenya.
The report covers adaptation, carbon markets, climate debt, migration, food security, water and health. It warns that climate-induced migration is emerging as a major concern: “By 2050. Up to 5 per cent of Africa’s population of some two billion people could be forced to be on the move due to climate change.
However the report released last week, puts numbers to what villages like Dama already know too well: this is the deadliest climate crisis Africa has faced in over a decade.
The statistics are chilling. In just five years, extreme weather events across 23 African countries claimed 69,220 lives—more than the entire previous decade combined. Malawi alone lost 1,807 people, many swept away by floods or starved by droughts that left crops withered before harvest.
But numbers don’t show the full story. Human faces do.
In villages like Dame, mothers are burying children who die from cholera after drinking from contaminated wells. Farmers are walking away from fields scorched by the sun, their seeds and sweat wasted. Young girls are missing school because fetching water now takes hours instead of minutes. For families who once lived on the margins, climate change has pushed them into free fall.
Sunita Narain, Director General of CSE, put it bluntly: “We must keep going. Let’s continue with conversation. We must work together and focus on solutions.” But solutions remain painfully out of reach for those who are living the crisis daily.
She said despite these challenges, African nations are rolling out strategies to adapt and mitigate climate impacts, ranging from net-zero emission commitments to harnessing indigenous knowledge against droughts and extreme weather.
The report highlights that 2024 was the warmest year on record for Africa, with nearly the entire surrounding ocean affected by marine heat waves. “The period between 2021 and 2025 has been the most devastating five-year stretch in terms of human toll from weather, climate and water-related disasters,” it adds.
The urgency goes beyond immediate deaths. Rising global temperatures are projected to displace up to 700 million Africans by 2030. Agriculture—the continent’s lifeline—has already shrunk by 18%, while new pests and diseases stalk what’s left of the harvest. In 2023, malaria transmission surged by 125% in Africa, leaving an additional 147–171 million people exposed by the end of the decade.
“It is unjust,” said Dr. Rita Bissoonauth, Director of UNESCO’s Liaison Office to the AU and UNECA. “Africa did not create this crisis, yet it bears its heaviest burdens. Our response must be rooted in equity, dignity, and justice.”
Back in Malawi, the injustice has a name: cholera. Clement Makuwa, Program Manager at the National Youth Network on Climate Change (NYNCC), describes how dry boreholes are pushing families to unsafe water sources.
“Cholera is everywhere now because of the water crisis,” he says grimly. “We have lost many people, and government needs to act swiftly.”
Meanwhile, regional leaders echo the warnings. Negus Lemma, Deputy Director General of Ethiopia’s Environmental Protection Authority, notes that floods and droughts are shredding Africa’s agricultural backbone. “Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are destroying crops, eroding livelihoods, and wrecking infrastructure,” he warns.
Yet behind these grim forecasts lies a simple, everyday reality: the crisis wears a woman’s face. It’s Nasimita in Dame Village, her cracked hands gripping an empty bucket. It’s the children missing school to queue at dry boreholes. It’s the mothers mixing maize porridge with dirty water, knowing the risk, but knowing hunger is no kinder.
The science is alarming. The statistics are staggering. But it’s the human toll that should haunt us. Africa’s climate crisis is not just about degrees of heat or millimeters of rainfall—it’s about lives measured in buckets of unsafe water and harvests that never arrive.
And for Nasimita, tomorrow will look the same: another long walk, another empty borehole, another gamble with survival.
