West Africa to Get More Rain After Floods Affect Millions
(Bloomberg) -- West Africa faces more heavy rains this week after flooding in a region that’s seen at least 2.3 million people displaced by rising waters in 2024 alone.
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Severe floods in Nigeria have affected more than 610,000 people, leaving at least 201 dead, according to the World Health Organization. The northeastern state of Borno has been badly hit, with the deluge severing access to hospitals and markets and washing away two major bridges in the city of Maiduguri, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement on Sunday.
Heavy precipitation is forecast from Senegal in the west to southern Chad and northern Democratic Republic of Congo to the east, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network said in a statement.
The floods are hitting a region that’s one of the least prepared globally for climate-related disasters, with little money available to buffer infrastructure against adverse weather and persistent insecurity regularly displacing inhabitants. The Sahel and Lake Chad regions have been beset by Islamist insurgencies along with increasing competition over land and water in recent years.
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“Heavy floods have exacerbated existing humanitarian crises in countries such as Cameroon, Mali, and Niger,” Hassane Hamadou, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s regional director said in a statement. “Heavy floods are now becoming more and more frequent, with serious humanitarian consequences almost every year.”
Last week Mali’s National Platform for Disaster Risk said that 180,000 people had been displaced in the country by the floods and 62 had died.
The wet weather in western Africa coincides with torrential rains in European nations including Poland, Austria and Germany that have left several people dead.
--With assistance from Matthew Hill, Prinesha Naidoo, Diakaridia Dembele and Katarina Höije.
(Adds impact on Mali in penultimate paragraph)
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