Seventy participants from several Central African countries met in N'Djamena from February 10 to 12, 2026, for a regional workshop on coordinating early-warning systems against climate disasters. The meeting was part of the pan-African AMHEWAS mechanism, led by the African Union Commission with support from UNDP, ECCAS and the international 'Early Warnings for All' initiative.
The Chad workshop followed an earlier step in the same programme: in July 2023, AMHEWAS's steering committee and technical working group had already met in Windhoek, Namibia, with financial backing from Italy, Sweden, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and Germany's GIZ.
Central Africa carries particularly heavy climate vulnerabilities: recurring floods, droughts and epidemics hit already fragile populations and economies. The goal set out in N'Djamena was to strengthen multi-hazard systems run at national level, seen as more effective than continent-wide coordination alone at anticipating disasters and protecting exposed communities.
For the African Union, early warning is not just a technical matter: locally run systems adapt better to conditions on the ground and strengthen states' ownership of their own risk management, rather than relying on outside observation.
Chad's selection as host was no accident: the Lake Chad basin combines a security crisis with climate vulnerability, making it a particularly demanding testing ground for the regional coordination AMHEWAS is aiming for.
Cameroon, which faces recurring floods in its North and Far North regions as well as droughts that strain farmers and herders, is among the countries directly concerned by this regional coordination, alongside Chad, Congo, Gabon and the Central African Republic.
AMHEWAS's next challenge is turning these coordination workshops into operational systems on the ground, a task the African Union Commission and UNDP are jointly tracking across several regions of the continent.
