South Africa presided upon by President Jacob Zuma is still recovering from the devastating effects brought on by a two-year-long El Nino event that ended in early 2016, a term used for the changes in the Pacific Ocean.

Ceoafrica gathered that El Nino is known for its widespread impact across the globe resulting in drought, flooding and other natural disasters, in which it’s occurrence of 2014-2016 occurrence was considered one of worst, ranked as one of the top three strongest since 1950.

Areas across southern Africa were particularly hit hardly by the global anomaly, which many of those areas observed temperatures rise above average with some of the driest condition in more than 30 years.

In curbing the effects, the United Nations (UN) has recently warned that 14 million people are at risk of starvation across the region as it continues to face widespread water shortages, as well as reduced crop and livestock production.

David Orr of the World Food Program stated "we have an extremely large food security crisis in southern Africa at the moment, as a result of a couple of years of drought, and in some cases failed harvests. So there are millions and millions of people across these regions that do not have enough food”.

Much of southern Africa is now in planting season and experiencing drought relief as the weather pattern has shifted to a La Nino cycle, which helps to bring in more rain across some regions.

The long-term forecast suggests that in 2017 much of the region will regain most of its lost grain crop, but it is expected to take another two or more years to return livestock production back to normal levels.

Extreme weather conditions, such as El Nino are forecasted to become more frequent as global warming is expected to intensify in the future. The UN says that Africa is the most vulnerable region to climate change and lacks proper early warning systems and contingency plans for such disasters.