The East African Community (EAC) has adopted a regional El Niño emergency plan. Member states will use it to coordinate their response to extreme weather. Heavy rains are forecast to continue through February 2027, The Eastleigh Voice reported.
Ministers adopted the plan on November 6 at an extraordinary meeting of the EAC Joint Sectoral Council on Cooperation in Defence Affairs, Interstate Security and Foreign Policy Coordination. The EAC headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania, announced the decision in a statement on Monday.
The plan focuses on five areas: early warning and anticipatory action, health preparedness and response, infrastructure and tourism resilience, agriculture, food security and livelihoods, and climate mobility and displacement. In practice, that means flood warnings, health services, roads, food supplies and help for displaced families.
The statement lists the priority risk areas as the Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya's Tana River and coastal regions, parts of Somalia and the Karamoja-Teso cluster. It also names the western highlands of Rwanda and Burundi, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania's Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.
Rebecca Kadaga, Uganda's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of East African Community Affairs, chairs the EAC Council of Ministers. She called for coordinated regional action. She warned that no member state could manage the cross-border effects of extreme weather alone.
The meeting directed the EAC Secretariat to mobilise resources urgently and prepare an implementation plan by November 30. It also called for a regional dashboard for sharing disaster information by November 25, stronger flood-risk management and measures to protect transport corridors.