(Bloomberg) — Flooding across much of Central and West Africa has displaced at least 2.9 million people and killed about 1,000, according to government and aid agency estimates. It has also devastated crops in a region already struggling with food shortages and insecurity.
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Heavy rains are likely to continue in the western half of the semi-arid Sahel zone, which borders the southern Sahara Desert from the west to the east coast of Africa, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network said. Researchers blame this year’s deluge, which coincides with a crucial harvest season, on global warming. They say rising temperatures are causing the air to trap more water vapor. Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria are being hit.
“The dramatic flooding we are currently seeing in West Africa coincides with the monsoon season,” said Benjamin Sultan, a researcher at the French government institute for sustainable development who studies climate change with a focus on West Africa. “It is getting more intense every year, causing deadly flooding like the one we are seeing in the Sahel.”
The floods are hitting a region that is among the least prepared globally for climate-related disasters, with little money available to protect infrastructure from bad weather. Chad ranks last in an index of 187 countries assessed by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative for vulnerability to climate change, Mali 180th, Niger 176th and Nigeria 152nd.
Record hunger
In Chad, floods have inundated nearly the entire country, leaving at least 340 people dead and 1.5 million homeless, according to the government. They have destroyed about 160,000 homes, submerged 260,000 hectares (642,470 acres) and drowned 60,000 livestock.
“The flooded agricultural land and drowned livestock will mean much less food is available now and in the future in a country where 3.4 million people are already facing acute hunger – the highest level of food insecurity ever recorded in Chad,” Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told a UN news conference last week.
Neighboring Niger has also been hit hard, with 400,000 people homeless and 273 killed. In Mali, 62 people have died and 345,000 people are homeless, according to governments and aid agencies working in the two countries. Food prices are rising in Niger as transport routes to markets become impassable.
“I have never seen rain like this,” said Mamadou Tidiani, a farmer with seven children in Niger’s Agadez region. “It is too early to say how much of the crop has been destroyed, but I fear it will be bad.”
Northern Nigeria was not spared either, with more than 610,000 people displaced and 201 killed, according to the World Health Organization.
Tahir Hamid Nguilin, Chad’s finance minister and chairman of the flood prevention committee, said the situation was unprecedented, especially in the northern part of the country, which is largely desert. The floods have affected the production of millet, maize, sorghum and rice.
Much of the Sahara is receiving more than 500 percent of its normal September rainfall, according to Severe Weather Europe, a blog that publishes meteorological forecasts. The International Rescue Group described the flooding in the region as the worst in 30 years.
The wet weather in West Africa has coincided with torrential rains in European countries including Poland, Austria and Germany, which have left several people dead.
–With assistance from Emele Onu, Matthew Hill, Paul Richardson, and Ana Monteiro.
(The penultimate paragraph mentions the worst flooding in 30 years.)
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