As climate change intensifies, leading to more frequent and severe floods, droughts, storms, and heatwaves, the number of people in Africa displaced from their homes has surged. These climate pressures often intersect with conflict, economic instability, and food insecurity, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and hindering community recovery.
Across Africa, too many people are being pushed to the edge by climate change, forced to flee their homes not because they want to, but because they have no other choice,” noted IFRC regional director for Africa Charles Businge. “This is not inevitable. With the right support, communities can prepare, adapt, and make informed decisions about their future.”
A new report from the IFRC suggests there are many ways to work with people so they can avoid having to make such dire, life-altering decisions. And if such a choice is necessary, there are also ways to ensure that people and communities are prepared so they can move safely and with dignity, the report concludes.
Entitled ‘Forced to Flee in a Changing Climate’, the report also stresses the urgent need for political leaders, policy makers, donors and international and regional organizations to do more to support local actors that work directly with communities facing these challenges.
“This report is a call to action, to invest in local solutions, empower communities, and ensure that no one is left behind when the next flood, drought, or storm hits." Charles Businge, IFRC regional director for Africa
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Indeed, the need for action is urgent. In 2024, 7.8 million disaster displacements were recorded in Africa, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. That’s 1.8 million more than the six million disaster displacements recorded in 2023.
“Over the past 60 years, Africa’s warming trend has exceeded the global average,” the report notes, citing measurements reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Recent years have seen heatwaves, heavy rains, floods, storms, cyclones and prolonged droughts.” Rising temperatures and more extreme rains, flooding, heatwaves and storms are expected to continue to drive even higher levels of displacement.
Concrete Actions in the Community
However, the report also offers a wide range of practical tools and solutions, along with many reasons for hope. The report features 30 case studies from 15 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Africa that are already working across multiple areas-identifying and reducing risks and promoting adaptation, preparing and acting early to reduce needs, providing assistance and protection, and promoting resilient recovery-to address and reduce the risks of climate displacement.
“Locally led and collective action can help people to adapt, move to safer areas, and recover and rebuild with dignity,” the report concludes.
British Red Cross: supporting communities hit by climate catastrophe
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Five Key Ways to Provide Better Options
Here are five ways Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies empower communities and expand their choices in the face of climate change:
- Identifying risks through community-led risk assessments: The impacts of climate change and disasters affect people differently. To better understand their risks, including their risk of displacement, local actors are working with communities to map hazards and conduct community-led risk assessments. This allows them to plan and prepare ahead of potential disasters and better adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. The South African Red Cross, for example, has played a key role in collecting local data through emergency needs assessments in anticipation of potential flooding. This allows them to evaluate the priority needs of displaced communities and inform their response.
- Strengthening adaptation and promoting resilience to climate change impacts: Climate change is impacting people’s access to existing services, threatening their livelihoods, and undermining health. Local actors help communities strengthen ecosystems and put in place nature-based solutions. Local actors can strengthen people’s access to social protection systems and help people protect their assets in ways that are climate-smart and climate-resilient. This can provide people with more options to diversify their livelihoods, find new ways to adapt, and stay in their homes, if they choose to. In Niger, for example, the Red Cross helps distribute drought-resilient seeds and it restocks cereal banks to reduce humanitarian needs when disasters arise. The Somali Red Crescent implements micro-economic initiatives to support local markets in the face of ongoing droughts and food insecurity.
- Acting early and preparing ahead of disasters: Early warnings, early actions, and preparedness measures-such as mapping evacuation shelters and routes-help people who have to move do so more safely. In Mozambique, the Red Cross is working in places where displaced people live to strengthen early warnings ahead of disasters, including communities with people already displaced by earlier storms or crises. Communities like these are often the most heavily impacted by climate events but they lack sufficient systems for early warning and disaster preparedness. In Malawi, the Red Cross shares information about evacuation options in real time at the community level before the disaster strikes, so people move out of harm's way and make informed choices before disasters strike.
- Providing people who are displaced with assistance and protection: Displacement cannot always be avoided. When it happens, local actors are often the first to respond, providing essential services to people in need - like food, water, shelter, and other relief items to address other basic needs. Local actors are also working to ensure their responses are protection sensitive. In these moments of chaos or crisis, the specific protection needs of in vulnerable groups such as women, children, older persons, and people with disabilities, are heightened. The Chad Red Cross addresses the humanitarian needs of flood-displaced communities, working to ensure volunteers and staff are trained to strengthen inclusive, safe, protection-sensitive approaches. In The Gambia, the Red Cross assists people displaced by floods in urban settings to better manage and store excess water.
- Supporting resilient recovery and longer-term assistance long after disasters end: When people are forced to flee their homes, they may go back to their original homes, stay in the places they sought safety, move to new locations to rebuild, or remain longer term in displacement settings because they have no other options. In all these contexts, local actors are helping people recover and integrate where they can. They are working to ensure that in the future, people’s risk of displacement is lessened, for example by helping them rebuild their homes in a way that is more resilient.
The successive floods are a stark reminder of the effects of climate change in Africa. Beyond the immediate emergency response, it is imperative to establish climate resilience measures to protect vulnerable communities, notably through anticipatory flood actions to strengthen disaster preparedness.
Map of Climate Change Hotspots in Africa
Recent Flood Responses in West and Central Africa
For several months, countries in West and Central Africa have been experiencing unprecedented flooding, which has destroyed homes, devastated crops, swept away livestock, and led to the loss of human lives. Red Cross volunteers are on the front lines, assisting impacted communities with support from IFRC and its partners, who are ramping up their emergency response.
So far, the IFRC and its members National Societies have launched emergency appeals in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and South Sudan to expand support to many more. However, the needs are immense, and additional resources are urgently needed to support vulnerable communities.
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Niger: A Crisis Worsened by Climate Change
In Niger, more than 1.3 million people have been affected by floods across the country’s eight regions. Official figures indicate the destruction of over 146,000 homes, loss of lives, and the devastation of over 22,000 hectares of crops. These increasingly frequent extreme weather events underscore the urgent need to strengthen infrastructure, early warning systems, and adopt climate adaptation strategies to reduce future disaster risks.
In response, the Red Cross of Niger is deploying a comprehensive intervention that includes emergency assistance, health services, prevention, and awareness-raising about climate risks.
Nairobi/Geneva, 19 September 2024 - Heavy rains over the last few weeks have triggered massive flooding and devastation in West and Central Africa, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their destroyed homes in areas already suffering from food insecurity and conflict.
Human-induced climate change “is likely to have significantly worsened the situation”, according to scientists at the Red Cross Climate Centre.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has launched emergency appeals in Chad, Niger, and Nigeria to respond to the catastrophic flooding.
Mohammed Mukhier, IFRC Regional Director for Africa says: “Torrential rains have triggered destructive floods that have left millions in dire need of assistance. The floods are testament to climate crisis damage in Africa and how it's affecting vulnerable communities. We need an urgent response now and in the coming weeks with more flooding expected.”
Chad is not alone in suffering the extreme effects of the climate crisis, with many other West and Central African countries experiencing severe weather.
Red Cross providing support to communities affected by drought in Niger
Humanitarian Service Points (HSPs)
Located in the southern belt of the Sahara and at the heart of trans-Saharan migration routes, Niger is host to varying forms of mobility, spanning voluntary and forced, regular and irregular migration. This includes internal and seasonal labour migration, mixed migration movements through Niger to Northern Africa and Europe, and voluntary and forced return movements. Niger is simultaneously a point of origin, transit and destination. In many cases, Niger is the last place where migrants and displaced persons interact with any humanitarian organizations before attempting to cross the Sahara into coastal countries.
The cities of Agadez and Arlit, gateways to the Sahara Desert, have become a hub for migrants and displaced persons where they live in precarious conditions in highly overcrowded sites.
Migrants and displaced persons in West Africa have always faced vulnerabilities and barriers to accessing services. Critical vulnerabilities affecting different groups include challenges in terms of access to medical care and safe housing, irregular or precarious migratory status, insufficient or inaccessible information and assistance, increasingly restrictive migration policies in countries of transit and destination, and human rights violations and other protection risks (including the extortion of bribes, ‘gifts’ or other services).
The authorities were involved from the start in the design of the new project, alongside representatives from migrant and displaced communities.
The new project in Arlit started by providing healthcare only. But the team realized health-related services were not enough to respond adequately to the diverse humanitarian needs of migrants and displaced persons. Over three years - and through regular needs assessments and feedback from migrants and displaced persons - the team gradually extended the project’s scope, until it developed into a fully-fledged HSP.
“Thanks to Humanitarian Service Points along migration routes, migrants are not left alone, abandoned. The HSP is both fixed and mobile. Every day, migrants (including migrant sex workers), displaced persons, Nigerien returnees and deportees as well as the host population can access the healthcare centre, which is situated in a fixed location. A pick-up truck also brings services to people in ’ghettos’ and brothels. The truck is fully equipped to provide medical care, psychosocial support, WASH services, and to distribute non-food items such as hygiene kits. The HSP works in partnership with public health centres, where people are referred for acute and specialist medical care.
Since the project operates on an annual basis, each year staff and volunteers receive new training on relevant issues. Regular training sessions include topics such as restoring family links, preventing sexual exploitation and abuse, community engagement and accountability, psychological first aid, protection and infection control and protection. For example, they undertake training on self-protection and infection control in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The current project phase includes a strong capacity-strengthening element: The French Red Cross is training Red Cross Society of Niger and public healthcare staff in the WHO’s Mental Health Gap Action Programme approach for mental, neurological and substance use disorders in non-specialized health settings.
“I wasn’t sleeping until I came to see the Red Cross. Service users of medical and protection referral systems as well as restoring family links have also indicated appreciation for related community engagement and accountability activities.
In contrast to other humanitarian actors in the area, who frequently deal with security incidents on their premises, there has never been a security incident in or around the HSP. The team believes this is due to the high level of acceptance of the Red Cross among migrants and displaced persons, host communities and local authorities. HSP staff shared their perception that most migrants and displaced persons recognize the Red Cross from their countries of origin, meaning they trust the emblem and feel reassured when accessing Red Cross services.
Good Practice: Cross-border Learning
In 2022, the respective migration teams from Niger, Mauritania and Chad National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies participated in a learning and stocktaking exercise in Dakar. The three National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies manage HSPs that are at different stages of evolution. This led to fruitful discussions about the definition of HSPs, their set up and design and expectations surrounding various types of activities. They discussed and shared tools such as databases, monitoring and evaluation programmes, stocktaking and wider project management methodology. The HSP team in Niger left Dakar feeling inspired and motivated to keep improving their activities for migrants, displaced persons and the host population.
“The Humanitarian Service Point is a holistic model that provides the ‘full package of services’. It responds to all humanitarian needs as thoroughly as possible. The HSP team in Niger particularly appreciates the holistic nature of the model. They value the multifaceted response to humanitarian needs, both for communities’ and volunteers’ sake. When the project only provided healthcare, volunteers had often felt frustrated, noticing the myriad of other needs but not being able to provide for them. Thanks to the evolution of the project toward a fully-fledged HSP, volunteers can, for example, complement healthcare with protection for survivors of human trafficking, and psychosocial support.
Challenges and Concerns
According to United Nations figures, around 4.5 million people, or 17% of Niger’s population, needed humanitarian assistance in 2024. Since the 2023 coup that ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s military government has taken a hard stance against Western organizations and allies.
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