DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The East African Community (EAC) has adopted a regional El Nino emergency plan to coordinate responses among member states amid forecasts of continued heavy rains through February 2027.
The statement, issued Monday by the EAC headquarters in Tanzania's northern city of Arusha, said that the plan was adopted on Friday during an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the EAC Joint Sectoral Council on Cooperation in Defence Affairs, Interstate Security and Foreign Policy Coordination.
Ugandan First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of East African Community Affairs Rebecca Kadaga, who chairs the EAC Council of Ministers, called for coordinated regional action, warning that no member state could effectively manage the cross-border effects of extreme weather alone.
The plan prioritizes 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, according to the statement.
The statement added that priority risk areas 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 meeting directed the EAC Secretariat to urgently mobilize resources and prepare an implementation plan by Nov. 30.
It also called for a regional disaster information-sharing dashboard by Nov. 25, stronger flood-risk management, and measures to protect transport corridors. ■
