A South African weather specialist says there is just three months' supply of water for human consumption and irrigation left in the country's "critically empty" dams.

In other nations, large proportions of populations are already dependent on food aid -- and not much relief is in sight for 2004.

"The food security for the next five months (until April 2004) remains precarious," the Famine Early Warning Systems Network said recently in a report on Zimbabwe.

"The humanitarian community is urged to plan for the worse case scenario," it added.

The number of people in need of food aid in Zimbabwe's rural areas is expected to increase from 4.8 million to 5.1 million between January and March next year.

The shortages have been attributed partly to the drought, but also the government's controversial land reform programme of taking white-owned farmland and redistributing it to blacks, which brought commercial agricultural production to a virtual halt.

Zimbabwe's neighbour Botswana is experiencing its worst agricultural performance in 10 years -- its total production enough to meet only 13 percent of national cereal requirements.

"The drought situation has seriously affected the animals' birth rate and worsened their mortality rate. The impact of drought is clearly visible across the country," said Musa Fanakiso, deputy director of animal health and production.

A livestock farmer on the outskirts of Gaborone, Keeinetse Keeinetse, said the drought was eating into his profits.

"Drought has long been a problem in this country and it is threatening the margins of the agricultural output," he said.

Meanwhile the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warns that Lesotho, an enclave surrounded by South Africa, is "heading for its worst drought in memory".

"People are already talking total crop failure in Lesotho. We will need continued international assistance in the forseeable future," said WFP spokesman Michael Huggins.

In Namibia and the tiny kingdom of Swaziland, about a third of the people will need food assistance next year.

"The situation is so bad... people are now losing hope since their livestock are dying in numbers. You can imagine what will happen if people start losing their assets since livestock sustain families," Nathi Vilakazi, a spokesman for an aid organisation in Swaziland, the Save the Children Fund, told AFP.

The majority of Swaziland's 1.1 million people live in rural areas where subsistence farming is the main source of income.

The WFP will next year start distributing seeds in an attempt to encourage Swazis to grow crops that can withstand severe weather conditions.

Namibia's deputy director of emergency management, Gabriel Kangowa, said the Windhoek government had raised less than half the funds needed to cope.

"We could buy supplies to cover food distribution for this month and January 2004," he said.

In Malawi meteorological experts say there is hope for "good rains" soon, and South Africa does not need food aid, but weather experts have warned of a difficult year ahead.

"Large parts of the country received significantly less rainfall in November than usual. Some even less than a quarter of what they are used to and that is a great cause for concern," agricultural meteorologist Johan van den Berg told the Afrikaans-language Beeld newspaper.

"Now we need far more than just the normal rainfall to bring the water levels in our dams back to normal."

Zambia, where more than two million people were at risk of famine last year, is steadily recovering from that crisis, but is still grappling with chronic poverty.

This year, Zambian farmers have produced enough to feed the country, the WFP says, with maize production doubling to 1.2 million tonnes, and Zambia has even exported maize to Zimbabwe for the first time.

But "areas of chronic food insecurity" remain and about 500,000 people, including farmers and their dependents, as well as AIDS orphans, still require assistance from the WFP, the agency says.

TERRA.WIRE