The small plane banks steeply to the east and the extent of the floods in the low-lying Teso region of Uganda become clear: kilometre upon kilometre of low-lying pasture land submerged, tens of thousands of hectares of staple crops like cassava, millet and groundnuts waterlogged. There are impassable roads, overflowing rivers, stranded cattle and devastated bridges. Villages are cut off and mud houses and roads have been swept away.
But this is a fraction of the devastation caused by some of the heaviest rains in memory to have hit a great swath of the continent from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa.
According to the United Nations on Wednesday, 18 of the poorest and normally driest countries in Africa, from Senegal, Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso in the west, to Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia in the east, have been seriously hit by months of torrential rains which, meterologists forecast, will continue in places for many more weeks.
”We believe at least 650 000 homes have been destroyed, 1,5-million people affected and nearly 200 people so far drowned,” said Elisabeth Brys, at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) in Geneva. ”This is harvest time for many countries and there are already food shortages.”
The rains, linked to ocean temperature changes of El Niño, have caught governments off guard. Many of the worst affected regions are remote from capitals and assessments are still being made.
Burkina Faso, Togo and Ghana have declared an official disaster and appealed for emergency international aid. More nations are expected to follow.
On Wednesday local government officials in Uganda appealed for help and accused their government of neglect. ”We told the government about the emergency two months ago but we have received no help so far. They have downplayed the problem,” said Stephen Ojola, governor of Soroti district, where many areas are cut off and where thousands of subsistence farmers have lost their crops.
Ojola said: ”The prolonged rains started months ago. Now the situation is getting worse. There’s no food here, people are hungry. This is harvest time for peanuts, millet and cassava, but it has all rotted in the ground. Some areas are unreachable. We cannot get food in.”
Ugandan health groups say the floods have led to nearly double the usual number of malaria and diarrhoea cases. Springs, wells and boreholes have been contaminated as latrines have overflowed. ”Higher incidences of malaria, diarrhoea, coughs, and eye infections are being reported,” said a local government report on Soroti this week. ”The stagnant water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes.”
The Ugandan government denied it was slow in responding, saying it was appealing to international organisations. ”The situation has been worsening by the hour. We need boats and helicopters to deliver emergency aid,” said Musa Ecweru, minister for disaster preparedness, after visiting Soroti last weekend. He said aid groups were now distributing food, drugs, shelter and household kits.
Meteorologists this week said the floods were likely to worsen in Uganda over the next two to three months.
The worst affected country may be Sudan, where 130 people have died since the rains started in early July, and more than 200 000 people have been made homeless. Justin Bagirishya, head of the southern Sudan office of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), told Reuters this week that 16 000 people were cut off with no access to humanitarian aid. ”There are no usable roads or airstrips,” he said.
In Ghana the floods have caused the deaths of at least 32 people and made 260 000 homeless, its government said. Some sources say the situation was worsened in Ghana by Burkina Faso opening a dam to cut dangerous water levels.
The floods have hit the most vulnerable people the hardest, the UN says.
According to Unicef most of the affected people were already living on a knife edge with food shortages before the floods arrived. A high percentage in some countries are living in refugee camps. A spokesperson for Christian Aid, which on Wednesday appealed for help, said: ”In some cases the camps have also flooded.”
The WFP said it was providing emergency food for seven countries and appealed internationally for more money. In Uganda $65-million is needed to feed 300 000 flood victims as well as refugees and displaced people for the next six months, said a spokesperson.
An initial assessment of Togo by the International Red Cross on Wednesday underlined the difficulty in delivering aid there.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation warned in July that a disruptive La Niña pattern — unusually cold sea temperatures — was occurring in the Pacific. ”The combination of tropical wind patterns over the Pacific and cooler than normal sea temperatures [off South America] generally has an impact on a planetary scale,” said Rupa Kumar Kolli, a WMO scientist. – Guardian Unlimited Â