A very strong El Niño is gathering over the Pacific, and the forecasts point to a dry southern African summer. With planting under way and aid budgets shrinking, one of the region's leading agricultural voices warns poverty could rise across most of southern Africa in 2027, even as South Africa enters the season with a record maize harvest in store.
Published 26 October 2026 · 17:04 GMT
A very strong El Niño is gathering over the Pacific, and the forecasts point to a dry southern African summer. With planting under way and aid budgets shrinking, one of the region's leading agricultural voices warns poverty could rise across most of southern Africa in 2027, even as South Africa enters the season with a record maize harvest in store.
On Monday, October 26, Wandile Sihlobo, South Africa's presidential envoy on agriculture and chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber, warned that southern Africa's poverty outlook for 2027 is turning dark. Writing in the Daily Maverick days after World Food Day, he argued that a likely El Niño drought, rising costs and shrinking humanitarian aid could push poverty up across most of the region next year. His warning did not arrive in a vacuum: five days earlier, the World Meteorological Organization's October 21 outlook had pointed to drier conditions in Southern Africa from November, and the Food and Agriculture Organization had already put the probability of agricultural drought above 50 percent across much of the region.
Farmers, Sihlobo noted, have already started planting the 2026-27 season, which leaves governments a short window to act before the outcome of the rains is known. The question for the months ahead is not whether the Pacific will warm, that is settled, but whether southern Africa's preparations will outrun its forecasts.
The institutional picture is unusually aligned. The WMO says the current El Niño could be unprecedented in strength, off the monitoring charts used for the past four decades, with a peak towards the end of 2026 and effects felt long after. Its October 21 outlook points to heightened risks of heavy rain in parts of East Africa and drier conditions in Southern Africa from November that could affect crops, water and livelihoods. The South-West Indian Ocean outlook forum reached the same southern conclusion, flagging drier conditions and increased drought risk for South Africa, southern and central Mozambique, Malawi and south-western Madagascar from October 2026 to March 2027.
The South African Weather Service adds the national detail: below-normal rainfall is the most likely outcome over most of South Africa from October to December, alongside above-normal temperatures, with a similar drier and warmer outlook for November 2026 to January 2027. The WMO puts the chance of El Niño continuing through February 2027 at almost 100 percent. The FAO's map completes the regional frame, with agricultural drought probability above 50 percent from Namibia and Botswana through Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa into Mozambique and Madagascar.
A seasonal outlook is a tendency, not a verdict, and the record contains a caution. Not every El Niño has brought drought to southern Africa: the very strong event of 1997-98 was associated with slightly above-normal rainfall over parts of South Africa's summer rainfall region. The WMO itself warns that the strength of an event does not directly determine how severe its impacts will be in any particular country, and that other drivers in the Indian and Atlantic oceans can reinforce, weaken or modify the typical effects.
Three further unknowns will decide the human outcome. The first is heat: the weather service has warned that if below-normal rainfall materialises, a high frequency of potentially severe heatwaves could follow. The second is money: whether the FAO-WFP appeal for 202 million dollars is funded, and how far anticipatory cash and early warning reach before crops fail. The third is policy: whether governments keep import pathways open, or reach for export bans that Sihlobo argues would deepen the damage.
Because in southern Africa, drought does not only cut a harvest; it eats the household balance sheet. The FAO's warning is explicit on the mechanism: livestock underpins both food security and household wealth, so when pasture fails, a farmer first loses crops, then livestock, and with that an entire livelihood. The 2015-16 precedent shows the scale: the region's worst drought in more than a century left 61 million people in need of assistance and pushed more than 8 million people into food insecurity, straining water systems and pasturelands alike.
The squeeze arrives on top of existing pressure. Sihlobo argues that ongoing wars in the Black Sea and the Middle East have raised energy costs and complicated supply chains, while competing needs in war zones and the winding down of American aid have left the World Food Programme with fewer resources to assist. A drought year landing in that context, he warns, would be tougher than the recent past in terms of food supplies; and the poorest households, with the thinnest buffers, absorb the shock first.
South Africa enters this El Niño in a stronger position than in 2015-16, and the numbers explain why. The Crop Estimates Committee's eighth forecast puts the 2026 maize harvest at 17.52 million tonnes, 9.61 million tonnes of white maize for human consumption and 7.91 million tonnes of yellow maize for animal feed, against annual consumption of about 12.0 million tonnes cited by Sihlobo. National dam levels stood around 90 percent on October 5, against 60 percent in the drought year, which suggests irrigated fruit and vegetables may be partly spared. South African agribusinesses, Sihlobo notes, are also better placed to import when supply glitches occur.
The cushion has holes. Wheat for 2026-27 is forecast at 1.81 million tonnes, an eight-year low, with imports revised up to 2.0 million tonnes. Input costs remain tight after diesel rose more than 50 percent year on year earlier in 2026, alongside higher fertiliser and electricity prices. And South Africa's very strength creates a regional obligation: if neighbours run short, pressure will grow on Pretoria to export, which is precisely why Sihlobo warns against export bans; they reduce incentives to expand production in good seasons and transmit price shocks to importing countries. The country's water financing, examined in our reporting on why the money for water never reaches the tap, will matter as much as the rain itself, and the collapse of foreign aid to Africa frames how little outside help can be assumed this time.
The second-order story is about who insures whom. If southern Africa's harvests falter while South Africa holds a surplus, the region's food security will depend less on any single country's crop than on whether grain actually moves across borders; and at what price. That makes trade policy, port logistics and transparent market information as decisive as rainfall, and it puts South Africa's export stance at the centre of a regional bargain it did not choose but cannot avoid.
The knock-on effects run through health as well as markets. A World Health Organization Africa study covering 2022-23 found cholera cases rising sharply in both floods and droughts, with drought periods associated with nearly four times as many infections as normal periods, as households turn to unsafe water. Add the FAO's warning that global food prices are already at a four-year high, and a regional shortfall would land on household budgets already stretched by fuel and fertiliser costs; turning a climate event into a nutrition crisis, and a nutrition crisis into a longer poverty trap.
The calendar now does the talking. The Crop Estimates Committee releases its planting-intentions report on October 27, giving the first hard read on how much land farmers are committing to the new season. Sihlobo's prescription for the window that remains is practical rather than grand: ensure importing countries have access to food supplies and a clearer pathway for the private sector to import; suspend grain-import bans that block supplies; secure livestock feed; and, where fiscal space allows, prepare household assistance for the coming months depending on how the season turns.
Beyond national capitals, the FAO-WFP anticipatory machinery is already moving, with assistance positioned for about 1.2 million people and a record of supporting more than 3 million people through early action during the 2023-24 El Niño. The first real test arrives with the November rains. If they fail across the southern region, the debate will shift within weeks from forecasts to food prices, from preparedness to relief; and the poverty warning Sihlobo issued this week will be measured not in probabilities, but in households.
Western coverage, led by the WMO from Geneva and the Reuters wire, frames the event as a global climate-risk story: a very strong El Niño, measured against four decades of records, with careful caveats that strength does not fix local severity. The emphasis falls on forecasting science, on markets, and on the October 21 call for decisive anticipatory action before the window closes.
Chinese coverage for African audiences, through CGTN Africa, stresses continental divergence rather than a single southern story: wetter conditions and flood risk in East Africa against drought risk in the south. Its reporting foregrounds the FAO-WFP appeal, the health stakes, cholera and malaria risks, and UNICEF's estimate that more than 162 million children in Eastern and Southern Africa could be exposed, and the anticipatory programmes already running in South Sudan and beyond.
South African coverage carries the farming voice. The Daily Maverick gives Sihlobo's prescriptions directly: keep import pathways open, suspend bans on non-genetically-modified grain where they block supplies, protect livestock feed, and share information transparently so prices adjust quickly. The Mail & Guardian and Farming Portal add the national ledger: record maize, high dam levels, a weak wheat outlook, and a preparedness roundtable convened on October 12 by Sihlobo, the National Agricultural Marketing Council and Bayer.
El Niño is a natural warming of surface waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific that disrupts weather worldwide. The World Meteorological Organization says the current event could be unprecedented in strength, off the monitoring charts used for the past four decades, with a peak towards the end of 2026 and a near-100 percent chance of continuing through February 2027.
The Food and Agriculture Organization puts the probability of agricultural drought above 50 percent across large parts of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and parts of Mozambique and Madagascar. The South-West Indian Ocean outlook adds southern and central Mozambique, Malawi and south-western Madagascar to the drier, higher-risk zone through March 2027.
South Africa harvested a record 17.52 million tonnes of maize in 2026, against annual consumption of about 12.0 million tonnes, and national dam levels stood around 90 percent on October 5, compared with 60 percent during the 2015-16 drought. Irrigated fruit and vegetables may therefore be partly spared, and agribusinesses are better placed to import if supplies tighten.
The FAO and the World Food Programme have appealed for 202 million dollars to protect 8.8 million people in 22 high-risk countries, with anticipatory assistance already positioned for about 1.2 million people. The assistance is designed to reach households before the worst impacts, helping them protect food supplies, livestock and livelihoods.
