Somalia faces growing hunger fears as El Niño strengthens

As the Super El Niño weather system continues to strengthen ahead of its expected peak in December, there are growing concerns in Somalia about its impact on food security. The International Committee of the Red Cross is warning that farmers face a devastating gamble to plant crops and risk losing everything to floodwaters or to leave their fields bare and face increased hunger in the coming year. We're in the rainy season and there have been flood warnings. It's planting season. If the river breaks and the floods hit us, The effects will last until the next rainy season in March. Somalia is consistently ranked by international organizations as being among the top regions at risk during El Nino cycles. A similar phenomenon in 2023 caused havoc, affecting close to 2 million people and displacing half a million. We're terrified of the upcoming rains. After three years of not having good rainfall, it feels like it will return with a vengeance. If it pours, forget those living in displacement camps. Even people in proper houses will be forced to flee. So what do you expect will happen to us in the camps? Aid agencies are on high alert, rolling out proactive measures building on lessons learned from the 2023 disaster to mitigate damage before the floodwaters arrive. This year we are probably better prepared. We have learned lessons from the last floods three years ago. And we also have much better data about where the floods can take place, which riverbank will likely break, and which are the high grounds and the low grounds where floods may or may not affect some part of the country. So better prepared and better data, that's the good news compared to 2023. The bad news is that humanitarian funding and capacity in general has seriously decreased due to a drastic reduction of humanitarian funding since 2025. It says this has weakened its capacity to prepare for and respond to the expected floods. But it's doing what it can, including distributing sandbags and pre-positioning essential supplies.