An interview with Dr. Richard Muita, Ag. Deputy Director of Research and Education at the Kenya Meteorological Department, conducted by IRM Africa.
A Climate Perspective on Preparedness, Early Warning and Resilience
El Niño is often viewed primarily as a weather or climate event. However, for organisations operating across Africa, it should also be understood as a broader enterprise risk management issue, with potential implications for strategy, operations, people, infrastructure, supply chains, financial performance, and long-term resilience.
Its potential impacts can affect organisations and communities differently depending on geography, sector exposure, existing vulnerabilities, and levels of preparedness. For risk professionals, the value is not only in understanding whether El Niño conditions may occur, but in assessing how climate signals could translate into operational disruption, business continuity pressures, food and water insecurity, infrastructure strain, public health risks, market volatility, and pressure on critical services.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has indicated that the likelihood of El Niño developing in 2026 has increased, with an 80% probability during June to August 2026 and probabilities near or above 90% of it continuing until at least November 2026. While the exact strength and timing remain uncertain, WMO notes that El Niño can influence global temperature and rainfall patterns, with implications for climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, health, energy, and water management.
For parts of the Greater Horn of Africa, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), through the Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum, has also highlighted a high likelihood of below-normal rainfall during the June to September 2026 season. The areas identified include South Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti, much of Eritrea, Sudan, and western and coastal Kenya. This reinforces the need for organisations to use climate information as part of risk identification, preparedness planning, business continuity, operational resilience, and strategic decision-making.
Against this backdrop, IRM Africa sits with Dr. Richard Muita, Ag. Deputy Director Research and Education at the Kenya Meteorological Department, an African climate practitioner with experience in climate science, climate services, resilience and risk, to share a Climate Perspective on El Niño 2026 in Africa. The conversation explores what El Niño could mean for organisations, economies, sectors and communities across the continent, and how climate information, early warning and anticipatory action can support preparedness, resilience and better decision-making through an enterprise risk management lens.
IRMA: El Niño is often viewed primarily as a weather phenomenon. From a risk management perspective, how should African organisations understand it as a broader strategic and enterprise risk?
RM: It is important to first understand what El Niño is and what its occurrence means. El Niño, is a major climate phenomena/condition associated with anomalous warming of ocean/sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which occurs every 2 to 7 years. When temperatures are extremely warmer than usual, it alters global weather and brings heavy rainfall and flood risks to East Africa and droughts in other regions such as eastern Australia and southern Africa. Examples include 1997/1998, 2011/2012, 2015/2016, 2023/2024. It’s opposite, La Niña is associated with cooler-than-usual ocean temperatures and causes drought/dry conditions in East Africa and other conditions elsewhere.
The severity of El Niño conditions is determined by interactions with other climate drivers such as Indian Ocean Dipole. Within this context, African organisations should view El Niño as both an opportunity and a threat, depending on the expected impact, enterprise type and management strategy in place. For example, an agribusiness should anticipate agricultural losses, business delays and other negative impacts during extreme El Niño conditions, but at the same time, the enterprise may maximize on the abundance of rainfall to increase production.
IRMA: What are the most significant ways El Niño could affect organisations, economies, sectors, and communities across different regions of Africa?
RM: Where El Niño conditions lead to extreme weather events such as heavy rains, floods, landslides, droughts and other extreme events, organisations, sectors and communities can face losses of unprecedented magnitude, including damages to infrastructure, loss of jobs, livelihoods and investments. In Africa, pastoral areas, which are historically arid and water-scarce, can benefit immensely through increased pasture and water, leading to increased livestock, meaning that organisations, economies, sectors or communities that depend on them can make more returns along their various value chains. In general, organizations’ preparedness and early or anticipatory actions in place can determine the level of impact due to extreme weather caused by El Niño conditions
IRMA: Which sectors are likely to face the greatest exposure, and what factors make them particularly vulnerable to El Niño impacts?
RM: Agriculture, water, energy, infrastructure, health, and communities living in vulnerable conditions. Most of these sectors are more exposed than others because they largely and directly depend on rainfall, and when this is extreme and enhanced, it overwhelms the capacity to adapt. For example, in the health sector, vector-borne diseases increase due to heavy rainfall.
IRMA: Beyond the immediate risks of droughts and flooding, what secondary or cascading risks should organisations and risk practitioners be preparing for?
RM: Secondary impacts organisations should prepare for can range from technical or operational, as well as financial and management challenges. These can include loss of investments or damages from floods on infrastructure, disruptions to transportation, increased cost of production, delays in delivery or raw materials, crop failures in the agriculture sector. In pastoral areas of Africa, conflicts due to competition for resources.
IRMA: Based on your experience, what are the most common preparedness gaps you observe among organisations, governments, institutions, or communities when responding to climate-related disruption?
RM: Financial resources, delayed infrastructure maintenance, shortage of medical supplies and agricultural inputs, weak institutions and emergency coordination, delays in communication, among others.
IRMA: How can organisations effectively use seasonal climate forecasts, early warning systems, and risk intelligence to strengthen business continuity planning, operational resilience, and strategic decision-making?
Starting from their involvement and engagement in the whole climate services value chain, including co-designing, co-production and participatory scenario setting and planning and access of impact-based weather and seasonal forecasts. The National Climate Services organizes the National Climate Outlook Forum every season, where all sectors, stakeholders, organisations, government and private actors engage and together, discuss and develop suitable and anticipatory decisions and plans which enable the users (all sectors) to plan and chose strategies that help them to effectively use seasonal forecasts alongside other weather services to strengthen their resilience to extreme weather shocks. These are usually tailored according to each organisation’s needs.
IRMA: What role should boards, executive leadership, and risk committees play in ensuring organisations begin implementing actions now to improve resilience, protect critical operations, and minimise disruption should El Niño conditions materialise?
RM: Boards and risk committees should work with the technical teams and other experts in the multi-agency platform for climate services in order to understand the expected El Niño impacts as well as facilitate any required actions or decisions for their staff or operational teams. They should be able to allocate sufficient financial resources, personnel, and other needs, including improving the capacity of their teams, insurance and others.
IRMA: Looking beyond this particular event, what longer-term lessons should organisations take from El Niño to strengthen climate resilience and embed climate risk into enterprise risk management?
RM: In the shorter term, most lessons are drawn from tactical decisions such as emergency evacuations or repair of a broken bridge. However, the longer-term lessons that organisations should take include slowed growth and recovery from losses or damages on infrastructure (through reconstructions), change of priorities due to redirection or reallocation of resources from regular development plans, delayed investments, and in the worst-case scenario, organisations may need to move to a different place away from the risk zone. Based on these lessons and others, organisation can re-adjust their medium- to long-term strategic plans in order to strengthen their future enterprise risk management and hence their resilience to climate shocks. This should include, re-financing, partnerships with government and other actors, as well as the involvement of local communities where they work.
IRMA: Finally, what message would you leave with Africa’s risk management community as organisations navigate an increasingly uncertain climate environment?
RM: Africa being one of the most vulnerable communities to climate change and variability, should strengthen its adaptive capacity through developing and implementing integrated adaptation and frameworks including facilitation of early warning systems and observation networks, improving the capacity of local economies and communities to adopt to climate risks e.g. through business startups, addressing poverty, creation of employment and investments, mobilization of resources and funding research and innovations that provide solutions to problems related to extreme weather events and other climate related hazards.
Finally, management community should learn to prepare early development of interventions and early response to climate risks, to minimize loss, damage, and deaths before they occur. From the climate services perspective, Africa’s risk management community should closely and regularly follow and access all weather and climate information provided in order to update their strategies in anticipation of climate risks.
