El Nino: Government should translate plans into action

Workers repair the drainage system in Nakuru city ahead of the El Niño rains. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

The World Meteorological Organisation has warned that El Niño is coming and will persist through February 2027. This is definitely not good news for North-Eastern Kenya, which is yet to recover from drought. This year, the National Disaster Management Authority reported a drought situation in Mandera and Wajir. With the current forecasts predicting a 90 per cent probability of heavier-than-normal rainfall between October and December, the situation is about to get worse.

A sudden transition from drought to intense rainfall does not automatically equal recovery. It can only complicate the situation for already weakened livestock now exposed to disease, degraded soils unable to absorb intense rainfall, damaged water systems and displaced households.

The Government-both at the national and the county level-says it has plans to address the unfolding crisis. Indeed, it would be inaccurate to say that Kenya’s two levels of government are doing nothing to prepare for El Nino. The national government says it has activated an El Niño contingency plan, including mapping hotspots.

County governments in Northern Kenya say they have set up multi-agency committees, developed public advisories and put rescue teams on standby.

But plans are not the same as readiness. The concern, therefore, is not the absence of policy announcements but the gap between national plans and the reality of their implementation at the grassroots level. The government itself acknowledges the need to strengthen last-mile warning, while the current contingency measures are still being rolled out only weeks before the expected rains.

Kenya is said to be arranging access to World Bank emergency financing. These are important measures, but readiness must be judged at the village, river crossing, dispensary, school, livestock route and county road—not only by the existence of a contingency document in Nairobi or a county headquarters.

For Northern Kenya, El Niño might come with an enormous infrastructure bill. Northern Kenya’s geography magnifies flood consequences. Seasonal rivers can cut roads within hours; culverts and drifts can become death traps; remote settlements can be isolated from hospitals, markets and relief supply chains.

Boreholes and shallow wells can be contaminated, schools can close, bridges can fail, and livestock markets can become inaccessible. The 2023 El Niño experience already showed how flooding in Garissa, Mandera and Tana River damaged water infrastructure while communities were still recovering from a historic drought.

Still, disaster losses are not measured only in kilometres of road or numbers of livestock. Repeated drought-flood cycles create grief, displacement, uncertainty and stress. Children drop out of school, families get separated as households lose animals that represent both income and identity. Flood-related disease, unsafe water and interrupted health services compound distress.

From a clinical-psychology perspective, preparedness must therefore include psychological first aid, protection systems, continuity of mental-health and psychosocial support, and community mechanisms that protect dignity and social cohesion.

The next few weeks must therefore be treated as an operational window, not a forecasting period. The forecast is valuable only if it triggers focused, deliberate and urgent action by both national and county governments to secure North-Eastern Kenya from the effects of El Niño.

This includes identifying high-risk settlements and road crossings, deploying rescue assets including veterinary and medical supplies, securing boreholes and critical facilities, establishing evacuation sites, vaccinating livestock and testing communication chains down to chiefs, elders and community networks.

County disaster committees must hit the ground running with less talk and more action. While the coming rains may bring genuine benefits such as replenished water sources, regenerated pasture and improved agricultural prospects, too much of it can turn these into catastrophe.

Both national and county governments now have forecasts, historical experience and institutional frameworks. If preventable lives, livelihoods and infrastructure are again lost in Northern Kenya, and indeed, anywhere else in the country, the question will not be whether Kenya knew- it will be what Kenya did with what it knew.

- The writer is an aspirant for the Mandera North parliamentary seat and a Disaster Management & Sustainable Development Specialist.