The government spent an average of $1.24million (Sh162 million) per capita to compensate households who were victims of weather-related disasters in the year 2023, a new report has revealed.
According to the whitepaper by African Risk Capacity (ARC), the government had set aside $69.8 million (Sh9.12 billion) towards Weather-Related Disaster Expenditure last year.
Per Capita Weather-Related Disaster Expenditure refers to the average amount of money spent on weather-related disasters per person.
The findings show that in addition to the government's contribution of $69.8 million (Sh9.12 billion), international humanitarian partners launched the Kenya Drought Response Plan 2023 raising $361.5 million (Sh47.2billion)
“The amount raised was 80 percent of the targeted $451.8 million (Sh59billion) to provide assistance in health, education, food security, nutrition, shelter, and WASH, to the population severely affected by the drought,” reads the white paper.
The report that covered 29 African states shows disparities between countries on the per capita expenditure on natural disasters in 2023.
Libya spent the most in compensating its natural disaster victims setting aside $75 million (Sh9.8 billion), Mauritius $62 million (Sh8.1 billion) and Burundi $24 million (Sh3.1 billion) – a high sum for low-income economies. All other countries spent less than $ 10 million (Sh1.3 billion) per capita.
On average, the states evaluated used $93 million (Sh12.2 billion) on weather-related disasters in 2023.
The economic loss from natural disasters generally includes damage to agriculture, property, infrastructure, and job losses due to business disruption, as well as government expenditure response mechanisms and loss of lives.
This paper focuses on the government's actual and budgeted response and recovery expenditure to weather-related natural disasters in 2023.
Research on government expenditure and the annual budget plans of 29 African countries, for the year 2023, revealed that they collectively spent $2.2 billion (Sh287 billion) on weather-related disasters.
The actual government expenditure was about $1.3 billion (Sh170 billion) while the expenditure based on budgets amounted to an estimated $0.9 billion.
According to data from the international disaster database (EMDAT), natural disasters in these 29 countries resulted in the tragic loss of 17,507 lives and affected 10 million people.
To provide context and indicate the scale of the economic cost of natural disasters, Munich Re, a leading reinsurer globally, has estimated that the total economic loss from weather-related natural disasters in Africa, including direct losses, was $8 billion (Sh1.05 trillion) in 2023.
Two of the most severe events that occurred in Africa in 2023 were Storm Daniel ($1.65 billion or Sh215 billion) in Libya and Tropical Cyclone Freddy ($1.53 billion which is about Sh200 billion) in Mozambique, which together resulted in an economic loss of $3.18 billion (Sh415 billion) and caused significant fatalities and destruction.
On average, each country spent $93 million (Sh12.1 billion) on weather-related disaster events in 2023, and the median expenditure was about $40 million (Sh5.22 billion).
“Understanding the current state of disaster risk management and the challenges and opportunities it presents is crucial in informing effective response strategies,” said UN Assistant Secretary-General and ARC Group Director General, Ibrahima Cheikh Diong.
The findings further show that floods occur more frequently than droughts, but droughts impact a significant number of people.
In the 29 African countries where statistics were available, 1,436 disaster events were recorded between 2000 and 2023.
The paper shows that 66 per cent of these events were associated with floods, 15.4per cent with storms, and 11.7 per cent with droughts.
The impact of heavy rainfall has been intensified by deforestation and inadequate land management practices.
Even though floods are dominant, the data showed that droughts affected more people.
For instance, in 2014, about 5 recorded drought events affected more than 25 million people, whereas 20 flood events affected less than 1 million people.