In brief
At an extraordinary ministerial meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, the East African Community adopted a regional El Nino emergency response plan. The plan prioritizes early warning, health, infrastructure, agriculture and food security, climate mobility, and highlights risk‑area prioritization across several member states. Members are directed to mobilize resources by the end of November and establish a shared disaster‑information dashboard before the next month.
The East African Community (EAC) reached a decision at an extraordinary ministerial meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, to adopt a regional emergency response plan for El Nino‑related flooding. The plan was approved on Friday and the formal statement was issued the following Monday, according to a release from the EAC headquarters.
Ugandan First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of East African Community Affairs Rebecca Kadaga, who chairs the EAC Council of Ministers, spoke on the importance of joint regional action. She warned that “no member state could effectively manage the cross‑border effects of extreme weather alone.”
"No member state could effectively manage the cross‑border effects of extreme weather alone."
Representatives from the EAC’s Joint Sectoral Council on Cooperation in Defence Affairs, Interstate Security and Foreign Policy Coordination discussed the heavy rains forecast to continue through February 2027. The council underscored that the new plan would coordinate health, agriculture, infrastructure, and climate‑displacement responses across the community.
The emergency plan prioritizes five interconnected areas. Early warning and anticipatory action aims to improve risk‑identification and community alerts; health preparedness and response focuses on disease prevention and medical accessibility; infrastructure and tourism resilience targets flood‑risk management of transport corridors and tourism sites; agriculture, food security and livelihoods seeks to protect crop and livestock production; and climate mobility and displacement addresses the movement of populations affected by climate impacts.
Risk‑area prioritization identified specific zones that require immediate attention. These 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. The statement urged that these areas become focal points for resource allocation and response coordination.
Action timelines were set in the meeting’s resolution. The EAC Secretariat was instructed to mobilize resources urgently and submit an implementation plan no later than Nov. 30. A regional disaster information‑sharing dashboard must be operational by Nov. 25, while measures to strengthen flood‑risk management and protect transport corridors are to follow shortly thereafter.
With the regional plan now in place, the EAC aims to enhance its collective capacity to respond to the impacts of El Nino. By pooling early warning systems, health resources, infrastructural resilience, and livelihood support, the community seeks to reduce the human and economic toll of the prolonged heavy‑rain season that threatens the region’s stability and development.
