The Impact of Drought on Household Food Security in the Limpopo Basin of Semi Arid Southern Africa: The Case of Kgatleng District in Botswana

Abstract

The Limpopo Basin is important to Botswana’s agriculture in terms of its land area of 80118 square kilometers. Climatic conditions in the Basin have ranged from droughts to floods in some years. The semi-arid nature of the Basin with the resultant low crop yields under rain-fed conditions has meant that communities in the area have adapted various strategies with regard to their access to food. These coping strategies are likely to undergo severe strains during periods of extreme weather patterns such as droughts. A household survey was conducted in two villages of Kgatleng District within the Basin in February 2005 with the objective of studying the coping strategies of selected households during drought in order to improve on coping mechanisms of communities in the Basin. The numbers of households selected by simple random sampling for study in the two villages were 61 and 45, respectively. The findings of the study indicated that during the drought in 2004 respondents’ sources of supplies were the shops, crop production and government provision. Coping mechanisms of households and differences in coping strategies in the two villages have been highlighted. The study recommends, among others, that the measures already in place to provide food security for households in drought prone areas in the Basin and in Botswana in general, need to be strengthened to ensure that households’ vulnerability to food insecurity during periods of climate change such as drought is minimized.