7 Oct 2024

Declaring the way forward for anticipatory action in eastern Africa

For three days, anticipatory action experts and practitioners met in Mombasa, Kenya, to debate and discuss how this approach is benefitting people in the region – and what needs to happen next. The main points from these conversations were crystallized into an official declaration from the event that sets out a shared vision for what needs to happen next. 

The Declaration from the First Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Action, or the ‘Mombasa Declaration’, lists 17 commitments. These include the need to: 

  • enhance the technical capacities of governments to design and implement anticipatory action
  • support the integration of anticipatory action into national policies, laws and frameworks 
  • communicate and advocate for anticipatory action across the humanitarian, development and peace nexus 
  • strengthen national and regional forecasting capabilities to ensure that early warnings are developed and communicated effectively.  

Importantly, these commitments align with the IGAD Regional Roadmap on Anticipatory Action, published in 2023. This helps to ensure that all the main actors in eastern Africa are coordinating around shared regional ambitions, rather than pursuing separate agendas. This approach puts into practice the first commitment in the declaration, which states the need to “coordinate for collective anticipatory action through existing coordination structures, such as regional and national working groups”.  

Anticipatory action is broadcast live to the nation 

The buzz around the 1st Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform extended beyond the 200 attendees at the venue. On the evening of 2 October, four of the participants were invited to join a discussion about anticipatory action hosted by Citizen TV, a popular channel in Kenya. 

Firstly, they outlined for the viewers how anticipatory action works in practice, drawing on examples from Kenya and sharing the benefits for at-risk communities. Following this, the panellists explained the reasons for hosting a regional dialogue.

“The region has been flipping from one [climate] extreme to another,” stated George Otieno from the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC). “People have lost their lives, people are losing their property... we come here [to the dialogue platform] to understand the regional challenges in terms of anticipatory action, [to learn] what people are doing in the region, and ... how [we can] move forward and develop a unified regional approach towards addressing the extremes.” 

The full discussion can be watched again on YouTube, along with other videos from the dialogue platform, on a dedicated playlist for the event

 

The 1st Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action is hosted by ICPAC, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Anticipation Hub, an initiative of the German Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. The organizing committee comprises the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Start Network, the University of Sussex, the World Meteorological Organization, the Jameel Observatory, the United Nations Development Programme, Save the Children and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. The Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa programme.

All photos © WFP