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Background
Angola’s national economy remains closely tied to oil production despite the volatility of oil prices on the international market. Nonetheless, agriculture has contributed nearly 15 percent to the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 (World Bank, 2024). The northern and central provinces of Angola are predominantly crop‑producing, with cassava, coffee and cotton mainly grown in the north, and maize cultivated in the central highlands. The southern provinces, which are characterized by low rainfall, are predominantly livestock‑producing, growing cereal crops such as sorghum and millet, in addition to cattle herding and goat keeping.
Although the national economy has progressed since the end of the 2002 civil war, households already experiencing high levels of poverty and food insecurity in the southern and eastern regions of Angola continue to struggle with the effects of the general economic slowdown caused by the devaluation of the currency in early 2023, the decrease in labour opportunities for rural households, the increase in inflation in early 2024, and the increase in food prices and agricultural inputs (African Development Bank Group, 2024 and Famine Early Warning Systems Network, 2024).
The 2023/24 El Niño phenomenon is the first since 2016 to be experienced in the Southern Africa Development Community region, where large numbers of livestock losses were reported due to lack of water and pasture. For the recent 2023/24 El Niño event, the main agricultural season (October–June) experienced below‑average rainfall, resulting in abnormally dry conditions across parts of Angola with significant rainfall deficits in January and February 2024 (Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia, 2024). High temperatures in the southeast of the country exacerbated the adverse effects of rainfall shortages on agricultural production in the provinces of Benguela, Cunene, Huíla and Namibe (Figure 1 in the PDF). Overall, the 2024/25 agricultural season is the sixth consecutive main season to experience below-average rainfall in the southern and eastern provinces since the 2018/19 season.