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The Sahel is marked by rainfalls of less than 1,000 millimetres or 40 inches a year, almost all of which occurs in one continuous season, which can run from several weeks to four months. Despite this vulnerability, the history of drought and famine in the Sahel do not perfectly correlate.
Valerie Amos, UN Humanitarian Chief during 2012, released a statement during the year stating that over 15 million people were malnourished in West Africa and the Sahel region. [4] The main contributor to the famine was the drought of Sahel, ensued from a combination of failing crops and El Niño. [3]
The Sahel's farmers have been largely cleared of blame for the 19th century's Sahel droughts. [17] The Sahel region's rains in the 1930s and 1940s were caused by the recent warming of the Indian Ocean, rather than by over-farming causing environmental degradation as previously assumed, according to a new joint Scidev/UN study. [17]
In parts of East Africa, there were five failed rainy seasons in a row between 2020 and 2022, as the region suffered its worst drought for 40 years. This displaced 1.2 million people in Somalia alone.
Human resource exploitation (such as overgrazing and deforestation) was first thought to be the sole cause of the drought. Nonetheless, large-scale climate changes may have contributed to the drought. Despite being the most severely impacted region in Africa, the Sahel is not the only one afflicted by desertification.
The immediate cause of desertification is the loss of most vegetation. This is driven by a number of factors, alone or in combination, such as drought, climatic shifts, tillage for agriculture, overgrazing and deforestation for fuel or construction materials.
The severity of African drought explained in different geographical areas. Included in the category of physical scarcity is the issue of overexploitation. This is contributing to the shrinking of many of Africa's great lakes, including the Nakivale, Nakuru, and Lake Chad, which has shrunk to 10% of its former volume. [23]
A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions. [1]: 1157 A drought can last for days, months or years.Drought often has large impacts on the ecosystems and agriculture of affected regions, and causes harm to the local economy.