(Bloomberg) — Floods across a swath of central and West Africa have displaced at least 2.9 million people, killed about 1,000 and are devastating crops in a region that’s already short of food and plagued by insecurity, according to government and aid-group assessments.
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The heavy rains in the western half of the semi-arid Sahel zone, which borders the southern Sahara Desert from Africa’s west to east coasts, are likely to persist, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. Researchers blame this year’s deluge, which coincides with a crucial crop season, on global warming, saying that rising temperatures are seeing the air store more water vapor. Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria are affected.
“The dramatic flooding that we’re currently seeing in West Africa coincides with the monsoon season,” said Benjamin Sultan, a researcher at the French government’s Research Institute for Sustainable Development who is working on climate change with a focus on West Africa. “It’s becoming more and more intense every year, causing deadly floods as we’re seeing in the Sahel.”
The floods are hitting a region that’s among the least prepared globally for climate-related disasters, with little money available to buffer infrastructure against adverse weather. Chad ranks last in an index of 187 countries assessed by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative for climate-change vulnerability, Mali 180th, Niger 176th and Nigeria 152nd.
Record Hunger
In Chad, the floods have swept across almost the entire country, resulting in at least 340 deaths and rendering 1.5 million homeless, according to the government. They’ve destroyed about 160,000 dwellings, submerged 260,000 hectares (642,470 acres) and drowned 60,000 livestock.
“With flooded farmland and drowned livestock, there will be a lot less food available now and in the future in a country where 3.4 million people already face acute hunger – the highest level of food insecurity ever recorded in Chad,” Jens Laerke, a United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman, told a UN press briefing last week.
Neighboring Niger is also hard-hit — with 400,000 made homeless and 273 killed — while Mali has recorded 62 deaths and 345,000 people are without shelter, according to the governments and aid groups working in the two nations. Food prices are rising in Niger as transport routes to markets become impassable.
“I’ve never seen rains like this,” said Mamadou Tidiani, a farmer with seven children in Niger’s country’s Agadez region. “It’s too soon to say how much of the harvest that was destroyed, but I fear it will be bad.”
Northern Nigeria hasn’t been spared either with floods displacing more than 610,000 and killing 201, according to the World Health Organization.
Tahir Hamid Nguilin, Chad’s finance minister and chairman of the flooding prevention committee, has said the situation is unprecedented, especially in the northern part of the country, which is largely desert. The floods have affected production of millet, corn, sorghum and rice.
A large part of the Sahara will get more than 500% of its normal September rainfall, according to Severe Weather Europe, a blog that publishes meteorological forecasts. The International Rescue Group described the floods across the region as the worst in 30 years.
The wet weather in western Africa coincides with torrential rains in European nations including Poland, Austria and Germany that have left several people dead.
–With assistance from Emele Onu, Matthew Hill, Paul Richardson and Ana Monteiro.
(Updates with floods being worst in 30 years in second last paragraph.)
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