Moving from policy to practice: the 1st Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform
People in eastern Africa are afflicted by a multitude of hazards, from drought and extreme heat to pests, disease and conflict. These often-compounding challenges cause major impacts on their lives and livelihoods – but there is increasing evidence that anticipatory action can help to reduce these.
Anticipatory action already has a strong policy basis in eastern Africa: seven countries have established frameworks and there is a roadmap to coordinate regional activities. Yet despite these encouraging steps, the approach is still mainly coordinated and implemented by humanitarian agencies. To increase its impact, it needs greater government involvement, more funding, and further integration into disaster-risk-management systems.
How to achieve this – and continue the shift from policy to practice – will be one of the areas under the spotlight at the 1st Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action, which takes place next week (1 to 3 October) in Mombasa, Kenya. Being held under the theme ‘From policy to practice: strengthening disaster risk management through anticipatory action’, it will draw together experts in the sector to review regional progress and share the lessons learned to date.
The Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform also seeks to identify the region’s policy, practice and financing priorities, while also providing an opportunity to develop multi-hazard systems for anticipatory action. The outcomes from the in-person event will be shared afterwards to ensure that they help to scale up and strengthen anticipatory action in the region, and so help at-risk communities become more resilient to the growing threats they face.
The 1st Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action is hosted by the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre, the World Food Programme 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.
Photo: Mombasa, Kenya. © Murad Swaleh / Unsplash