Heavy rains during the 2026 rainy season have triggered major flooding across several regions of Mali, causing extensive damage: destroyed homes, impassable roads, collapsed bridges and ravaged farmland. In Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, several neighborhoods have also been submerged.
Among the Sahel countries most exposed to this year’s flooding are Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania. Hundreds of people have died and numerous towns and cities now lie underwater.
The flooding stems from an increase in intense rainfall episodes across the Sahel and Gulf of Guinea region, compounded by the effects of prolonged earlier droughts. Years of drought have degraded and hardened the soil, making it less permeable — so that even moderate rainfall now generates heavy runoff. This dynamic, driven by rainfall intensification since the 1990s, means rain now falls with such intensity that infiltration is limited on already-degraded ground, worsening flood risk even where rainfall totals are not extreme.
The regional PRESASS 2026 forum, held in N’Djamena in April, had already anticipated this contrasted picture. Experts projected above-average to average rainfall for the central and eastern Sahel — including Niger, Chad and northern Nigeria — while forecasting normal to below-average rainfall for the western Sahel and Sudanian zone, covering Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and western Mali. The forum also warned of a heightened risk of climate-sensitive diseases such as cholera and malaria in flood-prone wetland areas, alongside crop losses and reduced yields in drier zones — pressures expected to worsen food inflation and household vulnerability across the region.
The scenario echoes a broader climate pattern already observed elsewhere on the continent: in North Africa, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia endured seven consecutive years of drought before being hit, in late 2025 and early 2026, by torrential rains and major flooding — rainfall levels not seen since the post-war period.
At the continental level, the African Union has formally recognized climate change as a threat multiplier for peace and security, adopting a dedicated climate strategy and action plan running through 2032 and continuing to work toward a common African position linking climate, peace and security.