UN official urges more funding as El Niño threat looms over Horn of Africa

Nairobi: A senior United Nations official has called for pooled resources to address the deepening crisis in the Horn of Africa and the impending threat of El Niño.

Rein Paulsen, the director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that while regional governments have prepared response plans, a severe funding shortfall threatens implementation.

“Plans are in place and actions are already being taken, but we need more financing and support to deliver,” Paulsen told journalists in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi following a fact-finding mission to Sudan on Friday.

Of the $193 million (R3.1 billion) sought for FAO’s Sudan emergency and resilience portfolio under its 2026-2028 Emergency Response Plan, only $44.1m had been received, Paulsen said.

Paulsen urged stakeholders not to view El Niño in isolation, but rather alongside conflicts and rising food prices across the region.

To help mitigate risks, he said the FAO and World Food Programme had launched a joint anticipatory action plan on June 18 covering 22 priority countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean.

He said the El Niño anticipatory action appeal sought $202m to protect 8.8 million vulnerable people across 22 high-risk countries from extreme weather driven by El Niño.

“It is always more expensive to respond to a crisis than to mitigate its impact in advance,” Paulsen said, calling on governments, humanitarian agencies and development partners to prioritise monitoring and early action.

He added the FAO was supporting Sudanese farmers by introducing drought-resistant seed varieties tailored to locally suitable climate zones, expanding irrigation to reduce dependence on rain-fed agriculture, launching nationwide livestock vaccination campaigns, and securing livestock feed and water supplies in building long-term resilience.

The World Meteorological Organisation said in its latest update that El Niño was expected to strengthen to a very strong event, peaking towards the end of this year, with a nearly 100% chance likelihood of persisting through February next year.