Climate Change Intensifies Floods Across Africa

AFP/APP

Lokoja, Nigeria: For the past 12 years, 67-year-old Idris Egbunu has faced the annual ordeal of floodwaters inundating his home in Lokoja, central Nigeria.

Each rainy season, the Niger River overflows, leaving his home submerged for weeks. Across Africa, worsening floods driven by climate change are wreaking havoc, displacing millions and threatening food security as crops are destroyed.

This year, torrential rains have affected 6.9 million people in West and Central Africa, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In Lokoja’s Kogi state, where the Niger and Benue rivers meet, floods became especially severe in 2012, and the region has been battered ever since.

Nigeria’s worst floods in 2022 killed over 500 people and displaced 1.4 million. In Kogi, emergency adviser Sandra Musa warns that flooding is already severe, impacting around two million people, with rising water levels defying the usual seasonal drop.

Despite contributing just four percent to global greenhouse gas emissions, Africa bears a disproportionate burden of climate change impacts, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

This year is expected to surpass 2023 as the hottest on record, further worsening conditions across the continent.