UN to improve early warning systems in Horn of Africa

The UN office for disaster risk reduction has announced a new partnership that will ensure the rapid dissemination of weather updates from African meteorological experts to disaster managers in vulnerable communities. A statement from the Nairobi-based UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) said the partnership with the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) will ensure rapid dissemination of weather updates to disaster managers in the Horn of Africa. “The failure to mobilise an adequate and timely response to the food crisis on the Horn of Africa when the alarm was first raised 18 months ago has led to many unnecessary deaths,” Pedro Basabe, Head of the UNISDR Regional Office for Africa, said in a statement issued on Tuesday. “This scenario is in danger of repeating itself across the Sahel this year where more than one million children are at risk of severe malnutrition and ten million people face hunger,” it said. For years, the Horn of Africa has been getting progressively drier. The past two seasonal rains have failed, and some areas haven’t seen rain in three years. Food security analysts say the drought is expected to grow and worsen over many months and called for the need to look at not only short-term solutions to meet families’ needs, but also begin investing in long-term solutions that will enable communities to better withstand dramatic fluctuations in regional weather patterns.Basabe said he hoped this new partnership between UNISDR and ACMAD will forge closer links between the climate science community and disaster managers in Africa.