By Obiabin Onukwugha
No fewer than 23 people have lost their lives following flash flooding caused by overnight rain between Friday and Saturday in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city.
According to authorities, torrential rains lashed the Kenyan capital late Friday, turning major streets into rivers and flooding thousands of homes and businesses.
Police I. Kenya said they had rescued at least 29 people overnight and “remain fully deployed, actively responding to distress calls and continuing with search and rescue missions”.
Multiple studies have tracked the increasing frequency of extreme wet and dry periods in East Africa in the last 20 years, including one on rainfall variability published by Scientific Reports in 2024.
AFP reported on emergency-level drought in northeastern Mandera county last month that had killed large numbers of livestock.
Neighbouring countries like Somalia and Ethiopia are also affected.
Kenya’s Airways said they had been forced to divert several flights away from Nairobi to Mombasa due to the rains.
The Kenyan Red Cross also said hundreds of households in neighbouring counties had been affected, and vast swathes of farmland destroyed.
“I would call for joint efforts between the government humanitarian agncies to deal with this problem, and to understand why we are having this havoc,” said Ahmed of the Red Cross.
