Africa’s floods of despair

topic:	Natural disaster
located:	Kenya
editor:	Bob Koigi

East, Central and South Africa are the latest regions in the continent to experience unprecedented floods that have so far claimed over 300 lives, displaced more than 3 million, destroyed crops, washed away roads and altered a people’s way of life.

The higher-than-normal rainfall that has been characterized by flash floods, landslides and attributing to the warming of oceans brings to light the dangers of extreme weather to vulnerable communities.

The East African region, which is the worst hit, has so far recorded 250 deaths with close to half of those coming from Kenya. Djibouti recently received the equivalent of two years’ rainfall in one day, affecting over 250,000 people.

As tens of thousands of people continue to be marooned by the floods and villages submerged, these regions are staring at an outbreak of communicable diseases which will further compound the humanitarian crisis.

These rain-triggered disasters have come as people recover from a prolonged and severe drought that saw governments declare hunger a national disaster. When the rains started, farmers were busy planting, hopeful of bountiful harvests. Now millions of hectares of crops have been destroyed, with countries staring at chronic food shortages.

A few months ago, Cyclone Idai and Kenneth devastated Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, claiming over 600 lives and leaving about 1.8 million people with dire need of humanitarian assistance. The pattern of unpredictable and violent rains is now becoming commonplace across the continent. Yet there haven’t been aggressive interventions at dealing with the new phenomena. Disaster preparedness and response remain dismal and medieval, post-disaster coordination is haphazard with no resources to handle the humanitarian crises that accompany such calamities, despite the cycle of extreme weather disasters becoming all too certain.

Now more than ever, coordination at the grassroots, the national, regional and continental levels should be a top priority. From a special extreme weather fund, increasing human power and skills to handle these disasters in time and frequent and coordinated updates on possible and extreme variations of climate, Africa needs to put its house in order when dealing with weather vagaries that are hitting home now more than ever.

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