Drought has brough untold suffering to the African nation

A SCIAF aid worker is asking Scots for support after she was greeted by crowds of starving people in Zambia pleading for help. 

Despite travelling to Africa for over 20 years, Aisling Gallacher (39) had never seen anything like it and vowed to return home to Scotland take action. 

Aisling said: “Through my work with SCIAF, I have travelled regularly to Zambia over the past five years and other nations before that, but nothing prepared me for my most recent trip.    

“As I got off the plane, I saw a queue of 200 people at the supermarket. Inside the shop, bags of maize were being limited per person. People were running. Panic was in the air. I knew this was different from before.” 

It was then she learned the Zambian government had declared a national emergency – the drought was the worst since 1980 – before Aisling was even born.    

“On the drive to Mongu – normally a spectacular journey through lush, green landscapes during the rainy season – I saw field after field of dried maize. Crisp, yellow, dead. No rain on the horizon. Climate shocks have made farming in Zambia extremely difficult. During the last rainy season there were only ten days of rain here. It should have rained every day from November until the end of February.     

“I met Kashueka, a single mother with four children. I met her near her family’s field which was full of dead maize. Kashueka was forced to pick wild fruits and dig for roots just to put a meal on the table.” 

She received support through a short-term SCIAF project in early 2024: milled maize, cooking oil and soya. This gave her children enough energy to go to school.   But this support was only for three months, and when the rains didn’t come farmers like Kashueka knew there would be no harvest in May. The crops she had planted were dead.  

Aisling said: “In Glasgow, my kids go to school with full bellies. Hers couldn’t go to school because they were so hungry. I came home determined to do what I could to help.” 

Aisling’s next stop was in Kabwe, where SCIAF’s expert partners have been delivering complex farming programmes for several years. These focus on skills training in organic agriculture, alongside the provision of pigs and goats for natural manure.    

She said: “It was like a different world. Despite the drought and hunger crisis spreading across the country, I found communities coping well. People told me they would have enough food for their families despite the drought. They had stores of grain which they could turn to; they had access to water thanks to specially dug bore holes; and they have money saved for emergencies.        

She said: “So this was the same country, with the same conditions, yet the people had enough to eat because they had been taught how to adapt around what Mother Nature threw at them. 

“This is proof that donations from people in Scotland make a real and lasting difference in the world. It’s proof that SCIAF has a real solution to global hunger.”    

SCIAF’s expert partners have been delivering complex farming programmes for several years. These focus on skills training in organic agriculture, alongside the provision of pigs and goats for natural manure.