A dangerous drought in the Horn of Africa looks set to continue with a sixth consecutive failed rainy season, a regional climate watchdog warned Wednesday, fearing a worse situation than a decade ago when some 260,000 people died in Somalia.
The forecast for the rainy season 2023 March-May points “to depressed rainfall and high temperatures,” the Intergovernmental Authority on Climate Prediction Development and Application Center (ICPAC) said.
Horn of Africa drought a ‘disaster’
The important season from March to May usually contributes up to 60 percent of the total annual rainfall in the equatorial part of the Horn of Africa.
Also read: UN says Somalia’s worst famine in half a century
The prospect underscores the fears of meteorologists and aid agencies who have warned of an unprecedented humanitarian disaster as the region’s longest and worst drought sweeps.
“In parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda that are most affected by the drought, this could be the 6th consecutive rainy season failure,” ICPAC said in a statement.
Nairobi-based ICPAC is a regional climate center designated by the World Meteorological Organization.
The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, and extreme weather events are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity.
Food is not safe
Five successive failed monsoons have killed millions of animals, destroyed crops, and forced more than a million people from their homes in search of food and water.
ICPAC said the situation was worse than during the 2011 drought, with 23 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia already “extremely food insecure,” according to the East African bloc’s IGAD and the UN’s FAO.
Also read: Global food security crisis: Somalia is on the brink of famine
That year a famine was declared in Somalia, and some 260,000 people – half of them children under the age of six – died of starvation, in part because the international community did not act quickly enough, according to the UN.
During that time, the region experienced two bad monsoons.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that 1.3 million, 80 percent of them women and children, have been displaced in Somalia due to the ongoing drought.
Also read: UN warns Somalia’s humanitarian crisis remains ‘appalling’
While the brink of famine has not been reached, Guterres said, 8.3 million people – more than half of Somalia’s population – need humanitarian aid this year.
Workneh Gebeyehu, the executive secretary of IGAD, called for urgent risk reduction measures in the Horn of Africa, warning that the situation is likely to worsen.
“National governments, humanitarian and development actors must adopt a no-regrets approach before it is too late.”