Several years of severe drought are forcing people to leave their homes in Angola to search for water and food in neighboring Namibia.
“There is real hunger and thirst here; that’s why the village has become depopulated,” Nghikembua (not his real name), who lives in Cunene Province in southern Angola, told Amnesty International in 2021. Nghikembua said nearly all the able-bodied people of his village have left, leaving behind only the elderly, like himself, “Those who still had some strength left felt forced to leave the village for Namibia.”
More than 1.8 million people live in Cunene and nearly 75% of the population is rural and depends on pastoralism and subsistence farming.
“Southern Angola has experienced repeated severe droughts, extreme heat and environmental degradation for quite a number of years, leaving families without water, crops, or livestock,” said Victor Nyamori, an Amnesty International researcher and migration lawyer who collected the testimonies for the recently published report featuring Nghikembua.
Approximately 30% of the area has been degraded by desertification, according to the Amnesty International report, leaving many subsistence communities without livelihoods.
“Namibia has also suffered from drought, but the state has responded much better and has put solutions in place to prevent the population from falling into food insecurity and to ensure access to water,” Nyamori told Mongabay in a phone call.
Between 2023 and 2024, a strong El Niño event brought the most severe drought in more than a century to the region. Namibia responded to the drought by expanding food and water assistance, supporting livestock owners and investing in social protection.
“Angola did not respond as well, which means that for Angolans, crossing the border has become a matter of survival,” Nyamori said. “For Angolans, displacement also means living in extremely scarce and sometimes dangerous conditions. For women and children, this means risking sexual and gender-based violence and trafficking.”
Historically, seasonal mobility formed an important part of social, economic and customary life in the region, enabling communities to access grazing land and water during droughts. But when colonization and arbitrary borders separated communities, such migration disappeared, Nyamori said.
“The border is the Cunene River,” he said. “On both sides, people speak the same language, have the same way of life, and are sometimes members of the same family. During the pre-colonial era, these communities crossed the river during periods of drought to find water.
“Perhaps, when responding to droughts, states should take this Indigenous knowledge into account, as it once helped prevent food crises, and allow these population movements to take place safely.”
For now, there is a bilateral agreement allowing Angolans to move freely in Namibia within 60 km (37 miles) of the border. Amnesty International is calling for Namibia to make its bilateral border agreement more permanent, particularly as climate scientists warn that a “supersized” El Niño is developing and will likely bring more devastating drought to the region.
Banner image: The Cunene River that divides Angola, left, and Namibia, right. Image © Amnesty International.
