July 4, 2026 | African Meridian
The Horn of Africa’s principal climate watchdog has raised the alarm for the months ahead. The IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), the specialised climate arm of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, has issued an alert covering the July-to-September season, projecting below-average rainfall combined with higher-than-normal temperatures across Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda.
The July–September window is a critical one for the northern parts of the Greater Horn. It coincides with the main rainy season that feeds staple crop production across the Ethiopian highlands, Sudan’s rain-fed farming belts and much of South Sudan, and it replenishes the pastures and water points on which millions of livestock depend. A poor season during these months is not a statistical abstraction — it translates directly into smaller harvests, weakened herds and heightened food insecurity in the lean months that follow.
The dual nature of the forecast is what makes it particularly concerning. Reduced rainfall alone stresses crops and pasture; elevated temperatures compound the damage by accelerating evaporation, drying soils faster and increasing heat stress on both animals and the people who tend them. Agriculture and livestock systems across the four countries are therefore facing pressure from two directions at once.
The warning lands on already fragile ground. Sudan and South Sudan are contending with conflict-driven displacement and disrupted markets that leave households acutely exposed to any additional shock. Ethiopia and Uganda, for their part, host large agrarian populations with limited irrigation coverage, meaning production outcomes remain tightly coupled to what falls from the sky. In such contexts, a below-average season can quickly cascade into a humanitarian problem.
ICPAC’s seasonal outlooks are designed precisely to prevent that cascade. By flagging risks months in advance, the centre gives governments, humanitarian agencies and farmers a window to act: adjusting planting decisions toward drought-tolerant and faster-maturing varieties, pre-positioning food and fodder stocks, managing water resources conservatively, and activating anticipatory financing mechanisms that release funds before a crisis peaks rather than after.
Regional experience shows that early action pays. The devastating multi-season droughts that have struck the eastern Horn in recent years demonstrated both the cost of delayed response and the value of forecast-based preparation. Humanitarian planners have increasingly embraced anticipatory approaches, and the current alert will test how deeply those lessons have been institutionalised.
For now, the message from Nairobi-based ICPAC is one of vigilance rather than panic: the season has been flagged, the exposed countries have been named, and the window for preparation is open. How governments and partners use the coming weeks may determine whether a hard season becomes a manageable one — or something worse.
