For millions of Africans whose livelihoods depend on rainfall, the most important question about the next El Niño may not be how strong it becomes, but whether governments and institutions can turn the warning into timely action.

A potentially very strong El Niño is now established fact, with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasting further strengthening and an exceptionally high likelihood that it will persist through February 2027. WMO says the event is expected to reach very strong intensity before the end of 2026, with impacts continuing into 2027.

The effects, however, will not be the same across Africa.

Parts of the Greater Horn of Africa are facing the prospect of wetter-than-normal conditions, while much of Southern Africa is preparing for below-normal rainfall and above-average temperatures. Regional climate centres are already translating the global forecast into more localised outlooks.

That diversity makes preparedness a continental challenge, but not one that can be addressed with a single response.

Abeeb Ajagbe, a Nigerian environmentalist, says this climate development deserves serious attention because the consequences will vary from one region to another.

According to Ajagbe, “the impacts will not be uniform across the continent,” reflecting differences in exposure and vulnerability among communities.

The WMO also cautions that the strength of an El Niño event alone does not determine how severe its impacts will be in a particular country or region because local conditions and other climate drivers can alter its effects.

The warning therefore comes with different demands for different parts of Africa: drought preparedness in some countries, flood preparedness in others, and financing systems capable of releasing resources before losses escalate.

Africa: Building A Continental Response

Africa’s response is increasingly being organised around continental and regional coordination.

In June 2026, the African Union Commission, Zambia and the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development convened a continental dialogue on preparing Africa for El Niño 2026/2027. The forum brought together climate and sector experts to strengthen the use of weather and climate information for preparedness.

In July, the AU convened an Extraordinary Consultative Session of its Specialised Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment. The meeting brought together member states, regional economic communities, AU experts and development partners to review preparedness measures and a proposed continental action plan. The AU said 280 senior government officials, climatologists and technical experts took part in the technical segment, while ministers subsequently considered and endorsed coordinated continental actions.

The process also explicitly drew on lessons from the 2023 El Niño episode.

The AU identified risks extending across agriculture and food security, water resources, energy, infrastructure, health and other sectors.

At the regional level, ICPAC is providing forecasts for the Greater Horn, while the SADC Climate Services Centre is issuing seasonal outlooks for Southern Africa. National meteorological and hydrological services are expected to translate those regional forecasts into country-level information and advisories.

The institutional architecture is therefore becoming more connected, but the existence of regional structures does not answer the more difficult questions: whether warnings are connected to money, decisions or action on ground.

Nigeria: Testing The Warning System

Nigeria is already receiving climate information that can be used for planning.

The Nigerian Meteorological Agency provides seasonal climate information, while the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency issues flood forecasts.

The 2026 Annual Flood Outlook identified 14,118 communities in 266 Local Government Areas across 33 states and the Federal Capital Territory as being at high risk of flooding. Another 15,597 communities in 405 LGAs across 35 states were classified as being at moderate risk.

The figures provide a measure of the scale of the preparedness challenge.

For communities exposed to flooding, warnings need to be connected to evacuation arrangements, protection of critical infrastructure and access to emergency assistance.

For farmers, seasonal information is useful when it can influence decisions on planting, crop selection, irrigation and other preparations.

In June 2026, Vice President Kashim Shettima directed the activation of the Fusion and Trigger Room concept within the National Emergency Management Agency as a national platform for coordinating early action against flooding and other climate-related disasters. NEMA said the Federal Government had also approved an intervention fund for anticipatory flood action.

The move represents an attempt to shift part of disaster management from response after an event to action before impacts escalate.

But the scale of the risks means that the system will be tested at community level.

Ajagbe says Africa has improved its preparedness architecture on paper, but implementation remains the bigger challenge.

He describes the continent as being “better on paper than a few years ago” when it comes to preparedness, but says the situation is less convincing in practice.

“We are not a continent lacking information,” he says. “We are a continent that keeps failing to convert information into action at the state and local level, where it actually counts.”

The Economic Cost Of Getting It Wrong

The consequences of inadequate preparedness extend beyond food insecurity.

Zimbabwe’s experience during the 2023/2024 El Niño-related drought provides a recent example.

A World Bank assessment found that the drought caused approximately $363 million in damage and losses. It projected a 3.2 per cent reduction in GDP, lower export earnings and a fiscal deficit 0.9 percentage points wider than it would have been without the drought. Government expenditure was also projected to rise partly because of higher food-import needs.

The agricultural impact was severe. Zimbabwe’s maize yield in the 2023/2024 season fell by about 60 per cent compared with the five-year average. The World Bank also noted that drought reduced household consumption and worsened poverty, particularly in rural areas.

The effects extended beyond farms.

Lower agricultural production meant higher import requirements, while reduced hydropower generation contributed to pressure on electricity supplies. The World Bank’s assessment projected lower exports and higher imports, including grain and electricity-related imports.

Malawi’s experience provides another example of the fiscal pressures associated with climate shocks.

In April 2024, following the government’s declaration of a national disaster linked to the food crisis, the World Bank made $57.6 million available through a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option. The financing was designed to provide immediate liquidity for the response.

The lesson is that the cost of a climate shock can move through several parts of an economy at once: agricultural production, food imports, electricity, household consumption, public spending and government finances.

When The Warning Does Not Reach The Farmer

Grace Titi Fredson, President of the Nigerian Women in Agribusiness Project (NIWAP), says many rural women receive climate information too late to make effective decisions.

Through NiMet and other partners, NIWAP receives seasonal rainfall predictions and weather advisories, she says. But the challenge is getting the information to women farmers in time and in a form they can use.

Many rural women, she says, receive information in English or information that is too general to guide decisions on their individual farms.

Fredson says local radio, SMS and voice messages in local languages could help close that gap.

“If a woman knows three days in advance that there’ll be a dry spell, she can adjust her planting or irrigation,” she says.

But receiving the warning is only one part of the equation.

“Many of our women do not have the resources to act on early warnings,” Fredson says, pointing to limited access to affordable credit, irrigation and quality seeds.

She says NIWAP is promoting climate-smart agriculture and working with partners on irrigation solutions for rural women.

One example is the MoneyMaker Max Manual Irrigation Pump being promoted through a partnership with KickStart International. Fredson says the pump requires no fuel, is portable and can be operated and maintained by rural farmers.

She also advocates financing that is affordable, does not rely on conventional collateral and allows repayment to begin after harvest.

For farmers without access to such resources, the forecast may arrive without providing a realistic option for changing course.

The Funding Test

Financing remains one of the clearest tests of whether early warnings can become early action.

In June 2026, FAO and WFP launched their first joint Anticipatory Action Appeal, seeking $202 million to protect 8.8 million people in 22 high-risk countries from the potential impacts of a strengthening El Niño. Of the 22 countries, 12 are in Africa: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

FAO and WFP said they already had the capacity to provide anticipatory assistance to 1.2 million people, but an additional $167 million was needed to expand support to another 7.6 million people. The planned measures include cash assistance, drought-tolerant and flood-resistant seeds, livestock protection, water harvesting and storage, flood protection and agricultural advisories.

The agencies also said that during the 2023/2024 El Niño event they had supported more than three million people through anticipatory action, providing assistance months before peak impacts occurred.

The wider climate-finance picture is much larger.

The African Development Bank’s 2026 Africa Economic Outlook estimates that African countries require more than $242 billion annually through 2030 to implement their climate commitments and address the consequences of climate change. With current climate-finance inflows estimated at about $29.5 billion, the annual gap is more than $213 billion.

That is not an El Niño-specific funding gap. It illustrates the broader financial environment in which African governments are being asked to prepare for increasingly costly climate shocks.

Financing Before The Crisis

Some African countries have already used financial mechanisms designed to release money more quickly after predefined disaster conditions are met.

In July 2024, Zimbabwe received a $16.8 million insurance payout from the African Risk Capacity (ARC) following drought associated with the 2023/2024 El Niño.

ARC said more than 4.7 million people were affected and that the payout was intended to support recovery and reach affected populations. WFP and Start Network also received payouts through the Replica programme, bringing the total ARC-related payouts to $32 million.

Malawi’s $57.6 million CAT-DDO was another example of pre-arranged financing being activated during the 2024 food crisis. The World Bank said the instrument gave the government immediate liquidity following the declaration of a national disaster.

These mechanisms do not eliminate the need for humanitarian appeals or longer-term investment, but they demonstrate one way governments can reduce the delay between a disaster and access to funds.

SADC is also working on the financing side of the problem. In June 2026, the regional bloc convened a dialogue on loss and damage and access to climate finance, noting that agriculture accounts for between 44 and 71 per cent of disaster damages across Southern Africa. It said recovery financing had not kept pace with the scale and frequency of climate impacts and highlighted the need for more predictable and accessible climate finance.

The funding question is therefore not simply how much money is announced.

It is whether resources are available before the worst impacts occur, whether they can be accessed quickly, and whether they reach the people and systems identified in the forecasts.

What Previous El Niño Events Taught Africa

Africa has had several opportunities to learn from previous El Niño events.

The 2023/2024 event provided a recent test of preparedness.

In Zimbabwe, drought severely reduced maize production and damaged economic activity. In Malawi, the government had already secured a CAT-DDO before the disaster, allowing $57.6 million to be released when the national disaster was declared. Zimbabwe’s participation in African Risk Capacity insurance also resulted in a $16.8 million government payout after the drought.

These cases show two different elements of preparedness: having information before a shock and having financing mechanisms capable of responding when predefined conditions are met.

The African Union’s 2026 preparedness process explicitly drew on lessons from the 2023 El Niño episode, while regional institutions have continued to expand climate forecasting and disaster-risk coordination.

The evolution is visible in the architecture: stronger regional forecasts, continental coordination, anticipatory-action programmes and pre-arranged financing instruments.

What remains difficult to measure is how consistently these systems translate into protection at community level.

Africa’s Risks Will Not Look The Same

The latest regional forecasts reinforce the lesson from previous events.

In the Greater Horn of Africa, ICPAC’s October-December 2026 outlook indicates a 90 per cent chance of enhanced rainfall over southern Ethiopia, central to southern Somalia and northeastern Kenya. It also forecasts a high chance of seasonal rainfall exceeding 400 millimetres in parts of central and southern Somalia, central Kenya, the Lake Victoria Basin, Burundi, western Rwanda and western Tanzania.

ICPAC says the forecast has implications for agriculture, disaster-risk management, health, livestock, water and energy and should be used alongside shorter-term forecasts and information from national meteorological and hydrological services.

Southern Africa faces a different outlook.

The SADC Climate Services Centre forecasts below-normal rainfall across much of central and Southern Africa during October-December 2026, including large parts of Angola, southern Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana, most of South Africa, Eswatini and Lesotho. It expects the drier signal to persist into January-March 2027 across several countries and forecasts above-average temperatures across most of the region.

The same El Niño event can therefore produce very different risks.

In the Greater Horn, preparedness must account for potentially wetter conditions and associated flood risks.

Across much of Southern Africa, governments are preparing for reduced rainfall and higher temperatures.

The regional forecasts make one point clear: continental coordination can support preparedness, but national and local action still has to reflect the risks in each location.

Nigeria And The Wider Test

Nigeria’s experience sits within this broader continental picture.

The country has detailed flood-risk forecasts, an anticipatory-action platform and an emergency-management system that is increasingly trying to use forecasts to trigger decisions before disasters escalate.

At the same time, the country is facing a difficult food-security environment. FAO’s September 2026 country brief says nearly 36.3 million people were estimated to face severe acute food insecurity during the June-August 2026 lean season. It also reports elevated food inflation and localized production risks from dry spells, conflict, and high agricultural input costs.

That makes the consequences of another climate shock potentially more significant for households already facing pressure from food prices, insecurity and reduced purchasing power.

Nigeria is not alone.

Zimbabwe’s recent experience demonstrates how drought can affect GDP, exports, agriculture, household consumption and government finances. Malawi shows how pre-arranged financing can provide liquidity when a disaster occurs. The Greater Horn demonstrates the need to prepare for flood risks rather than assuming every El Niño means drought. Southern Africa faces a different rainfall and temperature outlook.

Across the continent, the institutional response is also more developed than during earlier events.

The AU has convened governments and regional institutions around a continental action plan. ICPAC and SADC are providing regional forecasts. FAO and WFP have established anticipatory-action plans for 22 high-risk countries. ARC and other financial mechanisms provide examples of pre-arranged funding.

The remaining question is one of scale and implementation.

Can the financing match the risks identified by the forecasts?

Can national institutions move resources before losses escalate?

Can regional information reach communities in forms they can use?

And can farmers, households, local authorities and emergency agencies act within the window that the forecasts provide?

The answers will determine not only how Africa experiences the 2026/2027 El Niño, but how much of its potential human and economic cost can be avoided.