Cameroon, FAO Launch CFAF1.5bn Climate Early-Warning Project in the Far North

Cameroon’s government and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have launched a €2.4 million (CFAF 1.5 billion) project to strengthen climate risk management systems in the Far North region. The project targets more than 366,000 direct beneficiaries over a one-year period.

The initiative, the third phase of a project titled “Strengthening coordinated risk management systems for effective and rapid preparedness, anticipation and response to climate shocks in Cameroon’s Far North region,” was officially launched in Maroua on July 22. It will be implemented by a consortium comprising FAO, Action Against Hunger, the French Red Cross, the Cameroonian Red Cross, Codas Caritas and the National Observatory on Climate Change, among other partners.

The current allocation marks a significant increase in donor commitment to climate resilience in the region. A related FAO-implemented initiative, financed by the Green Climate Fund and launched in March 2020 to build climate resilience through agroforestry in the North and Far North regions, was valued at CFAF 135,944,000.

Officials say over the coming year, the CFAF 1.5 billion will go toward reinforcing early-warning systems, establishing multi-hazard communal plans, setting up functional community-level mechanisms, improving coordination between actors, and building the capacity of communities and institutions to anticipate and respond to climate shocks.

A region under recurring pressure

The Far North faces a resurgence of climate risks and multidimensional crises affecting local livelihoods, compounding existing security challenges in the region. Since 2021, FAO has operated an anticipatory action system there, which in October 2022 triggered a flood-risk alert and the pre-positioning of food and tool stocks in four community warehouses in Blangoua, Makary, Koza and Mora, along with the distribution of 6,000 sandbags for flood defences.

Blangoua and Makary, in the Logone-et-Chari department, rank among the worst-affected communes, with torrential rains and flooding of the Logone, Chari, El Beïd, Taf Taf and Serbowel rivers destroying homes and crops. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UN OCHA situation reports, the 2022 floods in the Far North destroyed more than 48,000 hectares of farmland and killed over 10,500 livestock across the Mayo-Danay and Logone-et-Chari departments alone, while a further round of flooding in September 2024 affected around 365,000 people and inundated tens of thousands of additional hectares of cropland. Drought presents a parallel risk: the region’s semi-arid climate, increasingly disrupted, has reduced agricultural output, degraded livelihoods and intensified competition between communities over access to water and land.

Evariste Atangana Zoa, secretary-general of the Far North regional governor’s office, who presided over the launch, said the project aims to shield the region from these shocks. “Beyond the security challenges, the region continues to face climate variations with multiple consequences that particularly have a negative impact on people’s lives,” he said.

Mercy Fosoh