Zimbabwe’s long dry season is being felt by plot owners who sunk bore – holes to counter water shortages. For years, plot owners in Bulawayo, the country’s second city, have utilised their land for thriving horticulture and agriculture projects, and these have been sustained by groundwater.

The ubiquity of boreholes in plots on the edges of the city limits has become a symbol of resilience in Bulawayo where the local municipality has for years struggled to provide water to residents. Without water, income-generating projects such as growing tomatoes, cabbages, cucumbers, and other greens has suffered as some residents relied on rain and municipality water. But at the beginning of the year, Bar – bara Nxumalo who owns a plot in one of Bulawayo’s areas once known for thriving agriculture projects, noticed that her borehole was not pumping as efficiently as it used to.

“I realised the water was coming in dribs and drabs, and thought perhaps the electricity was too low to pump the water as before,” Barbara said.

“But it persisted for weeks and I realised maybe there was no water under – ground anymore,” she said. She had to confirm it with a borehole drilling company. Zimbabwe has experienced a long dry season that has affected thousands of farmers across the country. Zimbabwe’s farming sector is largely rain-fed, and low rainfall has led to countrywide crop failure at a time the government is turning to boreholes for relief. For plot owners however, some of whom sunk their boreholes decades earlier, their investment to produce food on their land has become a casualty of climate uncertainty, and it came as a surprise that the boreholes have gone dry. Maxwell Bhebhe shakes his head, failing to understand that he has to hire drillers to sink his borehole deeper.

“There are things that you never consider, and I never expected that the borehole would dry up,” said Maxwell, who grows maize, peas and butternuts on his plot. “What it means is that I will take a break from growing any new crops while I decide what to do. Sinking a borehole is expensive. The deeper the drillers go, the more expensive it be – comes,” he said.

Groundwater has for a long time been viewed as an infinite resource by some farmers, but the disruption of traditional rainy season by climate change is forcing a rethink as hundreds of boreholes dry up. The country says it plans to sink thousands of boreholes as a response to climate change, but concerns remain that the uncoordinated drilling could lead to unintended consequences such as depleting the groundwater table.

Critics have long called a better groundwater policy, with borehole sinking companies in recent years registering brisk business, according to industry officials. In 2021, it was estimated that the capital city had over 28 000 boreholes, while the Zimbabwe National Water authority says it is aiming to drill 35 000 boreholes by 2025. This has highlighted the country’s reliance on the resource, but with little groundwater management policy in place at a time of poor rainfall. During the country’s government of national unity which ran between 2009 and 2013, the then Water Affairs Minister called for a ban on the sinking of new boreholes, citing concerns that there was no census to know exactly how many boreholes the country had.

Other concerns were that the haphazard sinking of boreholes threatened to deplete the groundwater resource, but in recent years, boreholes have been sunk across the country including in the cities. For plot holders who saw boreholes as the answer to their agriculture production ambitions, it has become a story of unexpected heartbreak as existing crops suddenly have no water. “We watch our crops wilt; there is nothing we can do for now. Unless we sink another borehole – which we cannot afford – the project is a complete write-off,” Nxumalo said. Community boreholes that have long offered relief to parched residents in the country’s metropolitan areas are also drying up at a time local authorities are struggling to provide water owing to low dam levels.

The Climate Ministry has also raised concerns about the impact of rainfall variability on groundwater levels, noting that Zimbabwe faces overall annual rainfall decrease. The Ministry says short, intense rain, while providing a lot of water, fails to provide enough to infiltrate and percolate aquifers as more is lost to runoff. Zimbabwe has not seen any significant rainfall since the onset of the traditional rainy season last year, which could mean more trouble ahead for plot holders whose farming activities have long relied on groundwater.