In brief
The East African Community (EAC) approved a regional emergency plan to manage the continued El Nino‑driven flooding and heavy rains forecast through February 2027. The plan prioritizes early warning, health, infrastructure, agriculture, food security, and climate displacement, and highlights key risk areas such as the Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya’s Tana River and coastal regions, parts of Somalia, and Tanzania’s Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar. The EAC Secretariat has been tasked with mobilising resources and launching a dashboard by late November.
The East African Community (EAC) approved a regional emergency plan to coordinate responses to ongoing El Nino‑related flooding and heavy rains, the EAC headquarters announced on Monday in Arusha.
The plan, adopted on Friday during an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the EAC Joint Sectoral Council on Cooperation in Defence Affairs, Interstate Security and Foreign Policy Coordination, focuses on early warning and anticipatory action, health preparedness, infrastructure resilience, agriculture and livelihoods, and climate‑related displacement, the statement said.
Ugandan First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of East African Community Affairs Rebecca Kadaga, who chairs the EAC Council of Ministers, urged member states to act together, warning that no single country could manage the cross‑border effects of extreme weather alone.
The meeting identified priority risk areas that include the Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya’s Tana River and coastal regions, parts of Somalia, the Karamoja‑Teso cluster, the western highlands of Rwanda and Burundi, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania’s Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar.
Officials directed the EAC Secretariat to mobilise resources and prepare an implementation plan by November 30, and to launch a regional disaster information‑sharing dashboard by November 25, while calling for stronger flood‑risk management and measures to protect transport corridors.
