The Member of Parliament for Abuakwa South, Dr Kingsley Agyemang, is calling on African governments to establish dedicated, legally protected disaster risk management funds to help countries prepare for and respond to increasingly devastating floods.
He argues that African governments must stop treating floods as emergencies to be dealt with after they occur and instead invest in prevention, preparedness and resilience.
Speaking in an interview with the BBC’s Focus on Africa, Dr Kingsley Agyemang, said African countries often have early warning systems but lack the financial resources and coordination needed to act on warnings before disaster strikes.
“Most often on the continent, there are effective early warning systems for many of these flood disasters. But the truth of the matter is that governments are unable to respond effectively to those early warning signs because of the financing regime,” he said.
Dr. Agyemang, an insurance expert with more than 20 years of experience as a risk management consultant believes a dedicated disaster fund, financed from multiple domestic sources, would give governments the resources needed to act before floods claim lives and destroy property.
“Instead of relying on central government budgets to fund disasters, governments can establish an integrated funding approach, where apart from the central annual budget, you have sources of revenue like mineral resources, corporate taxes, levies across board and donor partners,” he said.
“That will make us build funds over the years and be more proactive towards resilience.”
Ring-fenced funding
Dr Agyemang, who is also Vice-Chairman of Parliament’s Human Rights Committee, wants such funds to be established through legislation and ring-fenced to prevent governments from diverting them to other priorities. He argues that disaster preparedness should be regarded as a core responsibility of government because the protection of life and property is fundamental to governance.
“The basic responsibility of every government is to protect life and property,” he said.
“A government cannot say it has a priority more important than its basic responsibility of protecting life and property.”
His proposal follows the devastating floods that struck parts of West Africa on 29 June, including Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. In Ghana, at least 12 people were confirmed dead, with thousands of households affected after torrential rains triggered flooding across several parts of the country. The scale of the disaster has also renewed concerns about the continent’s ability to cope with increasingly extreme weather.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that climate change is likely to increase the frequency and severity of flooding in parts of Africa.
Across large African river basins, the IPCC estimates that a flood with a historical one-in-100-year probability could occur roughly once every 40 years at 1.5°C to 2°C of global warming, and about once every 21 years at 4°C of warming.
For Dr. Agyemang, who also lectures at the GIMPA, the warnings make it even more urgent for governments to move away from what he describes as a “reactionary” approach.
“Why should African governments always be waiting for donations to support victims anytime disaster strikes on the continent?” he asked.
“That is reactionary. That is why we have to be intentional and in-depth about a more domestically sustainable funding regime to tackle disasters on the continent.”
Beyond funding gaps
Dr. Agyemang says money alone will not solve Africa’s flood problem. He identified weak institutional coordination, political interference in urban planning and low insurance penetration as some of the major barriers to building effective flood resilience. He believes African countries can learn from other jurisdictions that have developed mechanisms to spread the financial risk associated with flooding.
He cited the UK’s flood reinsurance arrangements and the United States’ National Flood Insurance Program as examples of risk-pooling mechanisms that could offer lessons for African countries.
“These are tried and tested disaster risk management systems that have survived over the decades that Africa is refusing to learn from,” he said.
He argues that flood mitigation must also become part of economic planning.
“We have to begin to perceive risk prevention or flood prevention as an investment and economic activity rather than contingency,” he said.
Floods and public health
The MP, who is also a public health expert and lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, warned that the impact of flooding extends beyond deaths, destroyed homes and damaged infrastructure.
He said repeated flooding can create conditions for the spread of waterborne diseases and put additional pressure on already stretched public health systems.
“Malaria is still rising, waterborne vectors such as cholera cases are rising, typhoid, diarrhoea are all public health impacts of floods,” he said.
“We have come to live with it. That is the more reason why we have to build a more resilient flood mitigation system through an effective risk-pooling system because the rains will come anyway.”
He believes regular contributions to a national disaster risk management fund would allow governments to build financial reserves over time and deploy resources for drainage, flood control, emergency response and other preventive measures.
But he insists legislation is essential to protect the funds.
“If it is not backed by legislation, member states or governments can take the funds and use them for any other thing,” he said.
Dr Agyemang says he has not identified an African country that currently operates the kind of legally backed disaster risk management fund he is proposing.
“My reviews have not pointed to the fact that any African country has so far established a working disaster risk management fund backed by legislation,” he said.
“I stand to be corrected, but nothing like that has come up in all the reviews I have done across the continent so far.”
He says sustained advocacy will be needed to persuade governments across Africa to adopt a more proactive approach. For him, the growing threat of floods means the continent can no longer afford to wait until disaster strikes before mobilising resources.
“African leaders will have to be up and doing because flood disasters have come to stay, whether climate change or not,” he said.
“We cannot neglect the safety of our people. We have to stop the reactionary attitude towards disasters.”
Dr Agyemang believes Africa already has many of the tools and knowledge needed to build stronger disaster resilience.
“What we need is to come to the realisation that it cannot be the same over and over again and we expect a different result,” he said.
“Disaster has come to live with us and we have to find a sustainable way of managing it.”
His call, made during the BBC Focus on Africa interview, is aimed not only at Ghana but at governments across the continent as extreme weather continues to threaten lives, infrastructure and economic activity.
