Following Months of Drought, Floods in Kenya Kill More Than 40 People

Climate change and urban development are exacerbating floods in the region, experts say.

After months of intense drought conditions, Kenya was inundated by rain late last week, triggering severe flooding that killed more than 40 people. In the country’s capital city, Nairobi, a month’s worth of rain fell in 24 hours.

“The ongoing flooding in parts of Nairobi and several other areas of our country has caused immense distress to many families, resulting in the tragic loss of lives, displacement of residents, and damage to homes, property, and livelihoods,” Kenya’s president, William Samoei Ruto, said Saturday on X. “[W]e recognise that these floods once again highlight the urgent need for lasting solutions to the perennial challenge of flooding in our urban areas.” 

Intense storms are fairly typical across the region from March to May. But research shows that global warming is causing “climate whiplash”—making droughts more severe and longer lasting, while fueling wetter storms. At the same time, cities across East Africa are developing rapidly, often in areas that expose communities to greater flooding.  

Scientists are urging governments—in East Africa and beyond—to reconsider where and how they build to reduce their flood risk. Making cities “spongier” can help, they say.

Converging Extremes 

East Africa has long been a hotspot for weather extremes. Due to the region’s proximity to the equator and changing tropical weather patterns, it has two distinct rainy seasons and two dry seasons. The floods that swept through Kenya last week fall within the typical period of “long rains” in this area. 

But as temperatures warm, these seasons are becoming more unpredictable—and oftentimes more intense, scientists say. 

From October 2020 to early 2023, East Africa experienced five consecutive “failed” rainy seasons, marking the worst drought in 40 years. A recent study assessing the 2021 to 2022 period found that high heat caused by anthropogenic climate change exacerbated the conditions, resulting in major crop and pasture losses and widespread water shortages. 

Then, in March through May 2024, the skies opened in East Africa, with devastating consequences. A series of heavy rains and floods killed hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Dams failed and rivers overflowed, drowning droves of livestock and destroying schools and health facilities. A 2024 rapid attribution study found that an event like this has become about twice as likely and 5 percent more intense in today’s climate, largely because warmer temperatures enable the sky to hold more moisture. (Scientists have not yet conducted an attribution study for the latest rains.)

“We see decline in rainfall in the season in general, but punctuated by very strong and intense rainfall,” said co-author Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. These opposing weather extremes play off each other in dangerous ways, she added. 

Droughts, including the one earlier this year, increase flooding risk because prolonged dry conditions reduce the soil’s ability to absorb rainwater. Meanwhile, floods and droughts require different response measures from governments, so it’s difficult for them “to move from one extreme of a response to the other one,” said Kimutai, who is currently in Nairobi.

“It’s very clear … that Nairobi is not prepared for these events,” she said. 

Urbanization Issues

Hundreds of households were affected during last week’s flooding in Kenya, which experienced major losses of farmland and structures, Al Jazeera reports. Countries in East Africa are experiencing some of the world’s fastest urban growth rates. 

In places such as Nairobi and the surrounding region, many structures have been built—often illegally—on low-lying or riparian areas, which are particularly susceptible to flash floods and river overflows. 

“When you’re constructing all these new buildings on floodplains or on riparian land, you are … blocking the natural path of the river flow,” Hussam Mahmoud, a civil and environmental engineering expert at Vanderbilt University, told me. Further exacerbating the issue, governments often rip up ecosystems that absorb floodwater to build roads and sidewalks made with water-resistant materials such as concrete or asphalt. 

“That in itself has a major impact because your ground is no longer able to absorb and contain the water, or heavy rain that comes down,” Mahmoud said. “Ultimately, the water has to go somewhere. It cannot seep through the ground, and it ends up … causing cities to flood.”

Kenya has worked to demolish buildings and homes in flood-prone areas, but residents have struggled to find new housing, The Associated Press reported in 2024. Though Nairobi has been upgrading its drainage systems, Mahmoud doubts countries in East Africa will be able to handle the extreme flood intensity fueled by climate change. Many major cities around the world, such as New York and London, are experiencing similar issues due to development. 

Some urban hubs are turning back to nature to help adapt. For example, in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali, officials have spent the last decade converting degraded swamps into functioning wetlands, which they hope will help absorb water and climate-warming carbon, Yale Environment 360 reports. Meanwhile, cities such as Philadelphia and Copenhagen have been restoring wetlands and fortifying drainage systems as part of a broader effort dubbed the “Sponge City” movement. 

But climate change is largely outpacing these efforts, particularly in many areas of East Africa that lack the resources to make significant infrastructure updates in existing urban areas. And these approaches don’t address a major root cause of the intensifying weather extremes, Kimutai notes.

“We need to phase out fossil fuels, and I think that needs to happen like yesterday, because we know for sure that we can’t run away from this if we still continue pumping these warming-inducing gases in the atmosphere, which will continue to fuel these storms,” she said. 

East African countries aren’t the ones driving those emissions, even as they suffer the consequences. Kimutai stressed that it is critical to provide post-disaster resources and support for impacted communities because “they are really at the front line of the crisis.” 

Cover photo:  Floods tore through Kenya in early March 2026. Credit: Edwin Nyamasyo/Anadolu via Getty Images