From record-breaking warming to rising sea levels to severe weather, Africa bore the brunt of intensifying climate threats in 2025, as made apparent in the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) most recent State of the Climate in Africa report. After such an alarming year, climate experts are encouraging the establishment of more stable environmental policy, preparedness efforts and global collaboration.
The report is an extensive analysis of the climate conditions of the year prior, examining anomalies across the continent, recurring or destructive weather events, and the causes and effects of these conditions.
“You can see that the environment is affecting many sectors, not just livelihoods, [but] infrastructure and many of the ecosystems,” WMO Coordinator for Climate Services in Africa Zablon Shilenje told The Informer. “We need to have equipment and systems in place to ensure that we are monitoring what is going on in the environment.”
While the entire planet is experiencing rapid warming, with every year between 2015 and 2025 being among the 11 warmest on record, Africa is warming faster than the global record. In 2025, the global annual mean near-surface level temperature was 1.08°C above the 1961-1990 baseline. The temperature relative to the same threshold on the African continent was 1.21°C higher. Additionally, last year, the annual surface air temperature on the continent ranked between the third and seventh-highest on record at 0.51°C above the 1991-2020 average.
Aside from concerning levels of warming, Africa also faced numerous extreme weather events, which affected at least 13 million people and caused more than 3,000 fatalities. Floods accounted for more than half of these incidents, and droughts affected more than 8.5 million people in the continent’s Eastern region. This extreme weather is likely to worsen, as the second half of 2026 is predicted to see strong El Niño conditions.
During an El Niño event, trade winds weaken, and warm waters are pushed East. Global ocean warming between 2005 and 2025 is more than double what scientists observed between 1960 and 2005, and rising sea levels in Africa are exceeding the global average between 1999 and 2025. These conditions, combined with this year’s expected “super El Niño,” could make for much more severe weather across the African continent.
“I expect that this might introduce some shocks to the environment, and the world will need to be prepared– especially in Africa,” Shilenje told The Informer regarding the forecasted El Niño. “We need to be prepared for any impacts that might arise because of these projected changes in the environment.”
In response to the forecast, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) announced on June 18 that they launched the Joint Anticipatory Action Appeal, requesting $202 million to protect the anticipated nine million people who could be affected by intensified weather patterns across 22 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Funding from this appeal, which was originally set to support anticipatory action for 1.2 million people, will go towards the following measures: cash assistance, the distribution of drought-resistant or flood-resistant seeds, livestock protection, water harvesting and storage, flood protection infrastructure, agricultural advisories and the circulation of premature warning information.
Assistance like this is necessary, as according to the WMO’s report, fewer than 40% of African countries reported preparedness and response capabilities.
“Experience consistently shows that early action is more effective and less costly than responding after a crisis has escalated,” said Beth Bechdol, FAO deputy director general, in a statement. “When resources are available before trigger thresholds are reached, countries can protect food production, reduce humanitarian needs and help families safeguard livelihoods before critical planting, harvesting and livestock production windows are lost.”
Looking at Nigeria: A Need for Further Action
Nigeria, which experienced severe flooding in May 2025 that caused more than 200 deaths and further exacerbated the country’s humanitarian crisis, could benefit from international assistance like the Anticipatory Action Appeal and further climate policy implementation from its government.
Between conflict, displacement, public health emergencies and severe flooding, more than 8.8 million people in Nigeria needed humanitarian assistance in 2025, according to the U.N. International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). During the rainy season, flooding affected 252,878 people across 25 states, displaced more than 105,849 communities and damaged 35,157 homes and 41,657 farmland, roads and water systems.
“All these challenges are not really affecting the people that are [making] the decisions, but really affecting the people on the receiving end,” Olumide Idowu, executive director and founder of the International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI), told The Informer.
The Nigerian climate change activist believes the biggest threat to his country and the continent’s environmental health is the lack of follow-through from leaders. In a country where open defecation runs rampant, heavy storms and inadequate sanitary infrastructure could worsen both public and climate health through stormwater runoff.
Working in the intersections of climate change and disaster reduction, water, sanitation and hygiene, sustainable agriculture and food security pushes Idowu and the ICCDI to urge stakeholders to invest in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole, while teaching communities how to engage with the government to push for policies that will protect them and the ecosystems surrounding them.
“We need a strong environmental governance to make sure there is a lot of investment in the kind of infrastructure we need to put in place,” Idowu told The Informer, “and we must create more awareness and community-driven solutions.”
While Africa is the continent that contributes the least to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions— accounting for roughly 2 to 3%—- it is one of the most affected by the consequences of the pollutants’ release into the atmosphere. For that reason, Idowu believes that developed countries outside of Africa need to support the continent’s pathways toward becoming more sustainable.
Idowu told The Informer that many promises are being made in Nigeria through frameworks such as the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which recognizes that sustainable progress is necessary for the country’s well-being, and have good intentions, but lack implementation. He explained that while African countries receive financial assistance from developed nations outside of the continent, these funds are rarely meant for real environmental solutions. For example, air pollution is the second-largest threat to public health in Africa, but the continent receives less than 1% of global outdoor air quality funding.
“When you give money to a continent that is still struggling [and] still trying to develop, then there’s going to be a lot of backlash and low efforts for them to pour back into the environment,” Idowu told The Informer. “These people need to understand that we are not really emitting, and they need to pay for it.”
While Shilenje also acknowledges the fact that Africa emits less GHGs compared to the rest of the world, he believes restoring and safeguarding atmospheric health is a collective effort.
The WMO coordinator also hopes to see more technologies, especially satellite-based monitoring, made accessible to the African continent. These kinds of platforms could be key to detecting, mapping out and visualizing ecological risks across Africa in real-time, which could drastically improve intervention measures.
“Remember, the environment is the only natural resource that we have that [can] give us everything that we require, be it generating all the resources that the world needs, and also taking in all the waste that we generate,” Shilenje said, “and we need to protect it, not just for ourselves, but for future generations.”
