Ministers from the East African Community (EAC) have adopted a comprehensive regional El Niño Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan to mitigate the impact of severe extreme weather projected to persist through February 2027.
The joint initiative was approved during an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the Joint Sectoral Council on Co-operation in Defence Affairs, Interstate Security, and Foreign Policy Co-ordination at the EAC Secretariat in Arusha, where Ugandan First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for EAC Affairs Rebecca Kadaga warned that uncoordinated national efforts are insufficient to address cross-border climate threats, emphasising that historical lessons prove the cost of unpreparedness far outweighs the cost of readiness as the region prepares for the peak rains.
The emergency framework targets five core priority areas: early warning mechanisms, health systems preparedness, infrastructure resilience, food security and agricultural protection, and climate-induced population displacement.
The Council directed the EAC Secretariat to establish a regional disaster information-sharing dashboard by November 25, 2026, and finalise a complete resource mobilisation strategy by November 30. Priority risk zones identified for immediate intervention include the Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya’s Tana River basin, the Karamoja-Teso cluster, the western highlands of Rwanda and Burundi, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and coastal areas of Tanzania.
–ChannelAfrica/EAC–
