From Drought to Deluge: East Africa's Whiplash Climate and What It Means for Food Security

Situation Assessment: March 2026

Kenya is flooding. As of the third week of March 2026, at least 88 people have died in flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall across multiple counties. The Interior Ministry reports over 34,000 people displaced, with the Kenya Red Cross leading rescue and relief operations. Tana River County, Garissa County, and parts of the coastal strip from Kilifi to Kwale are among the worst affected. Roads are cut. Bridges are gone. Cropland along the Tana River flood plain is submerged.

The Kenya Meteorological Department issued advisories for above-average rainfall during the March-May 2026 long rains season. ICPAC, the regional climate center for the Greater Horn of Africa, had flagged enhanced rainfall probability for the equatorial eastern Africa sector in its February 2026 seasonal outlook. The rains arrived on schedule. Their intensity exceeded projections.

This is not, however, a story about one flood season. It is a story about what happens when extreme drought and extreme flooding hit the same land, in sequence, within three years.

The Drought That Preceded This

Between late 2020 and early 2023, the Horn of Africa experienced its longest and most severe drought in at least four decades. Five consecutive rainy seasons failed. Across Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that more than 36 million people were affected.

In Kenya, the National Drought Management Authority documented the loss of approximately 2.5 million livestock, primarily in the northern and northeastern pastoral counties of Marsabit, Turkana, Wajir, and Mandera. President Uhuru Kenyatta declared a national disaster in September 2021. At the drought's peak, multiple Kenyan counties were classified at IPC Phase 4, meaning Emergency-level food insecurity, one step below Famine.

The drought ended in stages. The October-December 2023 short rains returned, driven by a strong El Nino event. Pastures began recovering. But the agricultural damage was structural: herds decimated, soil degraded, planting cycles disrupted. When FEWS NET assessed Kenya in early 2024, it noted that recovery would take multiple favorable seasons even under the best conditions.

Those favorable conditions did not materialize. Instead, the 2024 long rains brought floods that killed over 300 people across Kenya and destroyed an estimated 168,000 hectares of cropland, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Cooperatives. Now, in March 2026, the cycle repeats.

The Oscillation Pattern

East Africa's climate does not moderate gradually. It oscillates between extremes with increasing speed. The key drivers are two large-scale ocean-atmosphere systems: the El Nino-Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole.

El Nino events tend to bring above-average rainfall to East Africa during the short rains season from October to December. The IOD, a pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies in the Indian Ocean, exerts a similarly strong influence on the short rains. When the IOD enters a positive phase, warmer waters in the western Indian Ocean push moisture toward the East African coast, enhancing rainfall. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology tracks IOD indices; research published in Nature indicates that extreme positive IOD events have become more frequent and are projected to increase further. The long rains from March to May, by contrast, are governed by different atmospheric dynamics and respond less directly to these oceanic modes, making them harder to predict.

The mechanism behind the whiplash is not that drought causes floods. The two are driven by different phases of the same oscillating systems. But they compound each other's damage. The 2020-2023 drought coincided with a persistent La Nina and negative IOD conditions. The subsequent shift toward El Nino in 2023-2024 and evolving IOD conditions flipped the rainfall pattern.

The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report, published in 2021-2023, projects that East Africa will experience increased rainfall variability, with amplification most pronounced under moderate to high emissions scenarios. The report notes with medium confidence that extreme rainfall events in the region are becoming more intense, though the signal is complicated by natural decadal variability.

This suggests a pattern that is not new but is accelerating. The return period between extreme events is shortening, giving landscapes, livelihoods, and institutions less time to recover between shocks.

What Whiplash Does to Soil

The agricultural damage from drought followed by floods is greater than the sum of its parts. The mechanism is physical.

Prolonged drought hardens soil. Clay-rich soils common across Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands, which cover approximately 89 percent of the country's land mass, form a surface crust when exposed to extended dry conditions. This crusting reduces water infiltration capacity significantly. FAO technical assessments document that runoff from bare crusted soils can exceed 60 percent of rainfall, compared to 10 to 25 percent on soils with maintained cover, depending on soil type.

When heavy rainfall then hits crusted soil, the water does not soak in. It runs off. And it takes topsoil with it. Erosion rates during post-drought flood events can exceed 20 tonnes per hectare, based on data compiled across multiple soil science assessments. For context, natural soil formation replaces roughly 0.5 to 1 tonne per hectare per year.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification estimates that severely degraded soils require at least a decade of sustained intervention to show measurable recovery in productive capacity. Without active soil conservation measures, the whiplash cycle creates a ratchet effect: each drought-flood sequence leaves the soil in worse condition than before.

Kenya's most productive agricultural zones are not in the arid north. They are in the central highlands, the Rift Valley, and the western region around Lake Victoria, where rainfall is higher and soils are generally more fertile. But the food security impact of whiplash falls hardest on the arid and semi-arid lands where pastoral and agropastoral communities have the least capacity to absorb repeated shocks.

Cropland Destruction: What the Data Shows

Kenya's long rains season from March to May is the most important agricultural period of the year. It accounts for over 70 percent of annual crop production, according to assessments by FEWS NET and the Ministry of Agriculture. Maize, the country's staple food, depends heavily on this season, as do beans, sorghum, and millet.

Comprehensive crop loss data for the March 2026 floods is not yet available. Assessments by county agricultural officers are ongoing. What is known: flooding along the Tana River has inundated farmland in Tana River and Garissa counties, where irrigated agriculture along the river basin supports tens of thousands of households. In Kilifi County, standing crops of maize and cassava have been reported destroyed in low-lying areas.

The 2024 floods provide a reference point. The Ministry of Agriculture reported approximately 168,000 hectares of cropland destroyed across Kenya during the 2024 long rains flood season. If the 2026 long rains continue at current intensity through April and May, similar or greater losses are plausible, though this remains an assessment, not a confirmed projection.

The timing matters as much as the scale. March is the planting window for the long rains season. Farmers who have not yet planted may miss the window entirely if fields remain waterlogged. Farmers who planted early may lose their seed investment. Replanting requires seed availability, which becomes constrained after widespread crop loss. FEWS NET has flagged delayed planting as a food security risk factor in its East Africa monitoring.

IPC Assessment and FEWS NET Projections

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification is the international standard for measuring food insecurity severity. It operates on a five-phase scale: Phase 1 is Minimal, Phase 2 is Stressed, Phase 3 is Crisis, Phase 4 is Emergency, Phase 5 is Famine.

IPC analyses for Kenya conducted in 2025 classified approximately 2.1 million people as being in IPC Phase 3 or above, meaning Crisis or worse, in the October 2025 to January 2026 projection period. The arid and semi-arid counties of Turkana, Marsabit, Samburu, and parts of Garissa were the most severely affected. For comparison, the 2022 drought peak saw nearly 4.4 million in Crisis or worse, a figure that has since declined substantially as drought conditions eased. These classifications were made before the March 2026 floods.

FEWS NET's Kenya Food Security Outlook, issued in February 2026, projected that the long rains season would bring above-average rainfall to most of Kenya. The outlook noted that while good rains would benefit agricultural production in most areas, flooding risk in low-lying zones could offset gains. FEWS NET projected that populations in flood-prone areas of the Tana River basin would likely remain in IPC Phase 3 through at least June 2026.

It remains unclear how the IPC will adjust its classifications in the next update cycle, expected in April or May 2026. If cropland destruction during the long rains proves extensive, the number of people in Phase 3 and above could increase significantly. The IPC Technical Working Group for Kenya will incorporate crop damage assessments, market price data, and displacement figures into its revised analysis.

Kenya's 2026 Growing Season: What We Know and What We Do Not

What we know: ICPAC's seasonal forecast for March-May 2026 indicates above-average rainfall probability across most of equatorial East Africa, including Kenya's central and western agricultural zones. The Kenya Meteorological Department's county-level outlook confirms this assessment.

What we know: maize prices in Kenyan markets were already elevated before the floods. WFP Kenya food price monitoring data from February 2026 showed maize prices 15 to 25 percent above the five-year average in several counties, reflecting lingering effects of the 2024 flood-induced crop losses and continued supply disruptions.

What we do not know: whether the above-average rainfall will persist through the full March-May season or whether there will be intra-seasonal dry spells. ICPAC issues mid-season updates that will clarify this.

What we do not know: the full extent of cropland destruction from the March floods. County-level agricultural damage assessments take weeks to compile. The FAO's GIEWS will incorporate these into its Kenya Country Brief, expected to be updated in April 2026.

What we do not know: whether seed stocks for replanting are adequate. Kenya's Strategic Food Reserve, managed by the National Cereals and Produce Board, holds maize stocks, but seed for replanting is a different supply chain that depends on commercial seed companies and county-level distribution.

Three scenarios emerge. If rainfall normalizes and dry spells allow replanting in April, the long rains harvest in June-September could partially recover. If heavy rainfall continues through May, the harvest will be significantly below average, pushing more counties into IPC Phase 3. If, following the floods, a dry spell hits during the critical grain-filling stage in May-June, the compounding effect could produce the worst single-season crop outcome since the 2011 drought.

What Circulates Incorrectly

Several framings in current coverage require correction.

The claim that the drought caused the floods is mechanistically wrong. The 2020-2023 drought and the 2024-2026 floods are driven by different phases of oceanic oscillation systems, primarily ENSO and the IOD. Drought does not cause flooding. But drought does amplify flood damage by degrading soil and depleting household resilience, which is a crucial distinction.

The claim that Kenya's current floods are unprecedented is historically false. The 1961 floods, driven by an exceptionally strong IOD positive event, were comparable in scale to current events. The 1997-1998 El Nino floods killed over 6,000 people across five East African countries and displaced hundreds of thousands. What is different now is the frequency: the interval between extreme events has compressed. The 1961 and 1997 events were separated by 36 years. The 2024 and 2026 flood events are separated by months.

The suggestion that stopping climate change would end Kenya's flooding is misleading. Climate change intensifies the extremes, and multiple attribution studies support this. But the proximate causes of death and crop loss are infrastructure deficits, land use in flood plains, and institutional response capacity. A cooler planet with the same drainage infrastructure and settlement patterns would still flood and still kill.

What to Watch

The next data points that will clarify this situation are specific and trackable. The ICPAC mid-season climate review, expected in late April 2026, will indicate whether the above-average rainfall pattern will persist through May. The IPC Kenya update, likely in April or May 2026, will provide revised food security classifications incorporating flood damage. The FAO GIEWS Kenya Country Brief update will quantify agricultural losses. WFP Kenya market monitoring will show whether maize prices are accelerating.

Until these data arrive, what can be said with confidence is this: Kenya's food security trajectory for 2026 was fragile before the floods began. The drought-flood oscillation has left soils degraded, seed stocks stressed, and household reserves depleted. The long rains season that was supposed to rebuild agricultural capacity is instead destroying it. How much it destroys depends on what happens in the next eight weeks.