2020 African Sahel floods

In all of 2020, flooding affected 2.7 million people in 18 countries in West and Central Africa and destroyed 197,000 houses, with many regions recording excess rainfalls. The number of flood-affected people this year was more than twice the case in 2019. Particularly from August to September 2020, more than 1.21 million people in East, West, and Central Africa were affected by floods across Africa due to more extreme rainfall than the usual rainy season.

The flood in 2020 destroyed 422,000 hectares of farmland, which resulted in the destruction of crops and fields, threatening the livelihoods of communities whose majority rely on agriculture. The people in this region have already suffered from food insecurity, so the severe flood made their living conditions even worse. What threatened the East, West, and Central African region this year was not only the continuous floods but also the COVID-19 pandemic and Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that floods also risk increasing the incidence of water-borne diseases, impact hygiene and sanitation, and reduce the capacity to put in place effective preventative measures against COVID-19.