With new funding from The Coca-Cola Foundation, the International Rescue Committee is scaling up anticipatory action responses across Africa to help communities prepare for climate-driven emergencies such as floods and droughts before they occur. This investment will enable earlier interventions, strengthen local resilience, and support faster recovery in regions increasingly affected by climate shocks.
Anticipatory action has become a critical alternative to traditional humanitarian response as climate hazards intensify across the continent. With this support, the IRC is expanding its work in climate-vulnerable African countries, beginning with an emergency response in Mudug, Somalia, after forecasts indicated a high likelihood of poor rainfall between October and December 2025.
The region had already endured two consecutive seasons of insufficient rainfall, which severely damaged livelihoods, dried up water sources, depleted grazing land, and pushed vulnerable agro-pastoral households to the limits of their coping capacity. A third failed rainy season was expected to further increase malnutrition risks, prompting the IRC to activate a contingency response that assisted 800 households, reaching approximately 5,600 people.
Through this response, the IRC provided early, multi-purpose cash assistance that allowed families to prioritize their most urgent needs while reducing reliance on harmful coping strategies such as selling productive assets or withdrawing children from school. The intervention also included nutrition support and water and sanitation services, addressing immediate vulnerabilities while helping prevent worsening malnutrition and disease outbreaks.
Building on lessons from the past three years, the IRC’s “Follow the Forecasts” anticipatory action approach uses advances in long-range seasonal forecasting to identify potential weather shocks four to six months in advance. This enables rapid contingency planning and targeted cash distribution once forecast thresholds are triggered, ensuring that limited humanitarian resources are directed to communities most likely to be affected.
By investing in anticipatory action, the IRC and The Coca-Cola Foundation aim to reduce the human and economic costs of climate-related disasters, protect livelihoods, and help communities across Africa better withstand and recover from increasingly frequent climate shocks.
