More than 162 million children across Eastern and Southern Africa could face drought, extreme heat and flooding in the coming season, but whether those shocks become a child nutrition, education and protection crisis will depend on what governments do before they arrive.
Development Diaries reports that UNICEF gave the warning while stressing that the shocks could worsen food and water insecurity and disrupt healthcare and education, exposing children to malnutrition, disease and displacement across 13 priority countries, with Somalia, Ethiopia and South Sudan among those facing particularly serious risks.
The UN agency is calling for anticipatory action that strengthens nutrition, health and water services, protects education and expands social protection before the worst effects are felt.
That phrase deserves attention because anticipatory action means releasing money when the forecast reaches a predetermined threshold, rather than waiting for the consequences to become visible.
It can mean cash transfers before harvests fail, water supplies before boreholes dry, supplementary feeding before wasting rates rise and drought-resistant seeds before the planting window closes.
Girls carry an additional burden, as longer journeys to collect water increase their workload, while food insecurity and rising household pressure can increase child marriage.
Research from Ethiopia has linked severe drought and food insecurity to sharp increases in child marriage, while climate-related economic pressure in countries such as Somalia and Djibouti has also been associated with greater risks of child marriage and female genital mutilation.
For their part, children with disabilities face another layer of exclusion when emergency plans depend on registration systems that fail to record disability, distribution points that require long queues or evacuation arrangements that assume everyone can move without assistance.
Pastoralist families also face the loss of livestock that serves as savings, insurance and a source of livelihood, with infants under two facing the consequences of malnutrition during the first thousand days, when poor nutrition can cause damage that lasts throughout life.
African governments already have legal obligations that speak directly to these risks. Article 14 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child protects children’s right to the best attainable state of health and requires measures to combat disease and malnutrition, including through adequate nutrition and safe drinking water, while Article 11 protects the right to education.
The Kampala Convention goes further on disaster preparedness to require states to establish early warning systems and disaster risk reduction strategies for internally displaced persons, including people displaced by natural disasters and climate change.
The warning therefore creates an obligation to prepare, rather than simply another headline for government agencies to circulate.
UNICEF and WFP have the technical capacity and are already calling for early action, while the African Risk Capacity also exists to provide parametric drought insurance that releases funds when predetermined conditions are met.
The financing mechanism is therefore already on the continent, but what remains difficult to see is the amount of money governments have actually positioned behind the forecast, as no continental body has published what it would cost to extend adequate parametric drought coverage to all 13 priority countries for the coming season.
Citizens can start by asking their national disaster management agencies for the forecast triggers, emergency stocks and financing already available for the 2026/2027 season, then publish what is missing.
Civil society organisations should also push for child protection indicators such as school withdrawal, child marriage and FGM to be included alongside meteorological and nutrition thresholds.
Disability rights organisations can audit evacuation, registration and relief distribution plans for accessibility and publish the gaps, while parents’ associations and school committees can ask education authorities whether school feeding programmes are funded and protected through the coming season, particularly in drought-affected areas where the loss of a daily meal can push children out of school.
The 13 priority governments should publish costed anticipatory action plans with named triggers, financing arrangements and measures for girls, children with disabilities and other groups facing heightened risks.
Their finance ministries should establish contingency funds that automatically release when agreed thresholds are reached, removing the last-minute discretion that allows warnings to become waiting periods.
As for the African Union Commission and African Risk Capacity, they should publish the cost of extending parametric drought coverage across the 13 priority countries, while UNICEF and WFP should publish country-level funding requirements alongside money secured and update the figures throughout the season.
