Building Drought Resilience Across Southern Africa: A Regional Imperative Satu KahkonenAnna Wellenstein January 22, 2026 This page in: English

https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/africacan/building-drought-resilience-across-southern-africa-a-regional-imperative This originally appeared in the Eswatini Daily News on January 21, 2026 Across Southern Africa, drought is destroying livelihoods at an alarming rate. This is not just an environmental crisis. It is an economic emergency that demands urgent action. According to Continental Drying: A Threat to Our Common Future, a newly released World Bank report, between 600,000 and 900,000 people lose their jobs each year in Sub-Saharan Africa because of water scarcity. That’s a loss equivalent to 7-9% of all new jobs created annually. For the two-thirds of the region's population who depend on rain-fed agriculture, these dry shocks don't just threaten crops; they threaten survival. Rural employment drops by 7.4 percentage points when drought strikes, hitting women, older workers, landless farmers, and low-skilled laborers the hardest. The impact on landless rural farmers is nearly six times greater than average.