In brief
On Monday, the East African Community announced approval of a regional emergency response plan for El Nino‑related flooding, adopted Friday during an extraordinary ministerial meeting. The plan prioritizes early warning, health preparedness, infrastructure resilience, agriculture, food security, and climate displacement, with a focus on high‑risk areas such as the Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya’s Tana River and coastal regions, parts of Somalia, the Karamoja‑Teso cluster, Rwanda and Burundi’s western highlands, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania’s Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar. The EAC Secretariat is tasked with mobilizing resources and preparing an implementation plan by November 30, and a regional disaster information‑sharing dashboard by November 25.
On Monday, the East African Community (EAC) approved a regional emergency response plan to coordinate actions against El Nino‑related flooding, according to a statement released by Xinhua. The plan, adopted Friday during an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the EAC Joint Sectoral Council on Cooperation in Defence Affairs, Interstate Security and Foreign Policy Coordination, aims to manage the cross‑border impacts of extreme weather that no member state can contain alone.
The meeting was held at the EAC headquarters in Tanzania’s northern city of Arusha, where Ugandan First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of East African Community Affairs Rebecca Kadaga, who chairs the EAC Council of Ministers, urged coordinated regional action. Rebecca Kadaga said,
"No member state can effectively manage the cross‑border effects of extreme weather alone,"
Key elements of the plan focus on early warning and anticipatory action, health preparedness and response, infrastructure and tourism resilience, agriculture, food security and livelihoods, and climate mobility and displacement. The plan includes risk‑area prioritization across member states, covering 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.
The EAC Secretariat has been directed to urgently mobilize resources and prepare an implementation plan by November 30. In addition, a regional disaster information‑sharing dashboard is to be launched by November 25, and stronger flood‑risk management measures and transport corridor protections are called for. These steps are intended to strengthen collective resilience to the forecasted heavy rains continuing through February 2027, as noted in the EAC statement.
