The African Meridian Newsroom · Dakar, Senegal · 1 July 2026
Climate-related disasters displaced an estimated 2 million people across West and Central Africa, according to the International Organization for Migration, as officials renew calls for a sharp increase in international climate adaptation funding to protect the region’s most vulnerable communities.
The displacement figure reflects the cumulative toll of flooding, storms and other extreme weather events that have repeatedly forced families from their homes across a region already grappling with conflict-driven displacement in the Sahel and instability along parts of the Gulf of Guinea coast. IOM officials say the scale of climate-linked movement is placing additional strain on humanitarian systems already stretched thin by other crises, while coastal communities in particular face a slower-moving but equally urgent threat from rising seas, saltwater intrusion and coastal erosion.
The organisation’s call for expanded adaptation funding centres on protecting the coastal and low-lying communities most exposed to future displacement, as well as building the kind of longer-term infrastructure — flood defences, resilient housing, early-warning systems — that can reduce how often families are forced to move in the first place. Without that investment, officials warn, climate displacement in the region risks becoming a self-perpetuating cycle: each new disaster pushes more people into already-strained urban areas or informal settlements that are themselves often built on flood-prone or otherwise vulnerable land, setting the stage for the next wave of displacement.
The IOM’s figures add to a growing body of evidence that climate change is already reshaping migration patterns across West and Central Africa, even as international financing for adaptation continues to lag behind the scale of need identified by the organisations working most directly with affected communities.