By Jeff Kapembwa
Over half of the 30,000 people in rural-Chama North constituency in Northern Zambia, hard hit by hunger are resorting to eating wild fruits, mangoes and other edibles, abandoning their farming chores while wandering from ‘one chiefdom to another to survive’ after the El Nino induced drought permeated the area.
Eight of the 13 wards in the area involving Nkhankha, Luangwa, Mazonde, Chisunga, Muchinga, Mwalala, Ndunda, Mbazi, Manthepa, Kalinkhu, Kaozi, Kamphemba, and Mphalausenga where food is depleted, with many subsistent farmers have exhausted their stocks, chiefly rice and maize, and are now relying on intervention from the Disaster Mitigation and Management Unit after a clarion call.
“The hunger situation is very severe and many of our people have nothing to eat and are resorting to eating mangoes, wild fruits and anything else to reduce the hunger situation because they have sold all the food they had,” Lawmaker, Yotam Mtayachalo said by phone, Wednesday, adding:
“We are now facing serious food insecurity the 2025.26 season because many of the people are unable to prepare their land and instead others are moving from one chiefdom to the other looking for food to eat,”
he says, disclosing that three people including children almost perish after eating poisonous roots, to overcome the reigning hunger in the area are living their farming areas to look for food Mtayachalo’s statements highlight the dire food insecurity gripping parts of the country, exacerbated by drought, economic hardship, and delayed government aid.
The call by the Chama North lawmaker for hunger redress was made earlier in August this year with an appeal to DMMU to provide relief food to the area spurred by the severe drought that devastated the earlier farming season.
In September 2025, Mtayachalo filed an urgent matter in the National Assembly regarding the erratic disbursement of the 2025 Constituency Development Fund (CDF), vital for rural infrastructure and local development.
The action by the lawmaker is supported by broader reports on Zambia’s food security situation.
In February last year, the government declared a national disaster due to a historic drought caused by El Niño, affecting over nine million people. An IPC report on Zambia, a methodology or tool used to classify the severity of food insecurity at a specific time, using a five-phase scale from “Minimal” to “Famine”, helping decision makers to understand the level of threat to lives and livelihoods before deciding on interventions, projected severe outcomes in the aftermath of the drought.
Arguably the report indicated an estimated (17 percent of the population analysed) are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above) between October 2025 and March 2026.
This is an increase compared to the period (May – September 2025) where 1.2 million people (12 percent of the population) faced Phase 3 or above, however, though it is a significant improvement compared to the overall situation in 2024 (April – September) where 4.95 million people (29 percent of the population analysed) faced Phase 3 or above.
Population of Chama District-North and Southern constituencies is estimated at 140,326+, according to the 2022 Census.
Earlier, the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment forecast a return to normal to above-normal rainfall in the 2025/26 season, after a successive season of drought and irregular weather patterns.