Malawians turn to toxic wild yams as drought worsens

With crops scorched and failing, residents are struggling to find food.

76-year-old Manesi Levison is among those in desperate need. She is cooking bitter, orange wild yams, known as mpama, which must be boiled for eight hours to remove their toxins.

“Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” Levison told AFP. She is caring for 30 grandchildren, ten of whom are sheltered under the thatched roof of her home in Salima, near Lake Malawi. “It is a root that grows in the wild which we dig up so that the kids can at least have something to eat for the day,” she explained.

“People have died or fallen sick from eating this, so you have to make sure that it cooks for a really long time, all the time replacing the cooking water so as to remove the poison," she added.

The drought, worsened by the El Nino weather phenomenon, has devastated Malawi’s crops. With the rains ceasing in April, fields have burned, and the next harvest isn’t expected until March.

Malawi, heavily reliant on rain-fed agriculture, is facing severe challenges. The drought affects 44 per cent of the country’s crop area and impacts up to 40 per cent of its 20.4 million people, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

President Lazarus Chakwera declared a state of natural disaster in 23 of Malawi’s 28 districts in March and requested $200 million in food aid.