Ministers from the East African Community (EAC) have adopted a comprehensive regional El Ni\u00f1o Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan to mitigate the impact of severe extreme weather projected to persist through February 2027.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–ChannelAfrica\/EAC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":44691,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-50480","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"East African Community Ministers adopt regional emergency response plan for El Ni\u00f1o rains","published_date":"2026-11-10 08:47:51","news_description":"East African Community Ministers adopt regional emergency response plan for El Ni\u00f1o rains","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50482,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50480\/revisions\/50482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=50480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}