After a drought that dried up boreholes across northern and eastern Kenya, El Niño rains are arriving with a new danger: floodwater that can contaminate the water families drink.
By EEW Magazine Online News Editors
Scenes from flooding in Kenya in April 2024. (Getty Images/Illustration by EEW Magazine Online)
After a drought that dried up boreholes and seasonal rivers across northern and eastern Kenya, the rainy season now arriving brings a different threat to the water families drink. Kenya’s Ministry of Health warned in September that heavy rain and flooding can contaminate water sources.
The ministry asked counties at high risk, including Mandera, Wajir, Garissa and Tana River, to monitor the safety of drinking water as the country heads into a season forecast to be far wetter than normal, Kenyans.co.ke reported.
The Sept. 14 advisory listed cholera, typhoid and other diarrheal diseases among the risks, along with malaria, dengue fever and Rift Valley fever, and warned that flooding could disrupt health services. The Kenya Meteorological Service Authority has forecast above-normal rainfall across much of the country for the October to December short rains, according to its seasonal outlook.
Forecasters attribute the wetter season to a strong El Niño and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole. In that pattern, waters in the western Indian Ocean run warmer than those in the east.
The rains follow one of the driest stretches Kenya’s drylands have recorded. The October to December 2025 short rains brought only 30% to 60% of normal rainfall across most areas. It marked the driest season since 1981 in parts of eastern Kenya, the World Health Organization said in January. By the end of that month, the National Drought Management Authority estimated that 3.3 million people in the country’s arid and semi-arid counties were food insecure, according to its January bulletin.
Scenes from flooding in Kenya from 2024 to 2026. (Getty Images/Illustration by EEW Magazine Online)
In September, the authority reported that water and pasture conditions were deteriorating again in Turkana, Garissa, Baringo and West Pokot, The Standard reported.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network projected in its September update that Crisis-level food insecurity, the third of five phases on the scale humanitarian agencies use, will persist through January in Garissa, Mandera, Tana River, Wajir and Turkana. The network said flooding is expected to damage roads, restrict the movement of people and goods, and disrupt food and livestock markets in Garissa, Mandera, Tana River and Wajir. In the Dadaab refugee camps in Garissa, it projected that flooding could push conditions to Emergency, the fourth phase.
Kenyan officials are planning for large-scale displacement. The National Disaster Operations Centre has estimated that about 500,000 people could be displaced, and a Danish Refugee Council analysis put the range between roughly 297,000 and 1.03 million, depending on how severe the rains become, Kenyans.co.ke reported in August.
Both are planning estimates. The last El Niño rains, in 2023 and 2024, displaced more than 500,000 people across 43 counties, the Kenya Red Cross said.
“We are planning for the worst. We pray for the best,” Ahmed Idris, the Red Cross secretary general, said in August, naming the lower Tana River basin, Wajir, Mandera and Lamu among the areas at highest risk of displacement, K24 reported.
The water systems those communities depend on entered the season already weakened. In February, nearly a third of water systems in drought-affected areas were not working. Many communities were traveling long distances for water, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in an operational update on its Kenya drought response.
When floodwater reaches open wells, earth pans and damaged pipes, the water that remains can carry the diseases the health ministry warned about. Young children, who lose fluids quickly through diarrhea, face the greatest danger.
Much of the work of finding water falls on women and girls. Worldwide, they spend an estimated 250 million hours every day collecting it. Women are responsible for fetching water in more than 70% of rural households without water service, according to the 2026 United Nations World Water Development Report.
A woman holding a young child stands in a neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
Those figures are global. The report found that the burden costs women and girls time for school, work and rest, and exposes them to health risks and violence along the way.
Rain that refills dams and water pans can help dryland communities recover, provided the water reaching households is protected and treated. For families across Kenya’s drylands who spent the dry season walking farther for water, the months ahead will test whether the water that finally arrives is safe to drink.
Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, Inc., the Buffalo, N.Y.-based Christian nonprofit that publishes EEW Magazine Online, announced this year that its Safe Water Project is expanding into Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands. These are places where chronic drought, low rainfall and weak water infrastructure leave many communities without a reliable supply. The project works to bring clean drinking water closer to communities in need, with the goal of protecting children from preventable illness and easing the daily burden of water collection on women and girls.
The ministry’s water work draws on God’s promise to the thirsty in Isaiah 41:17: “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.”
Ministry Note
EEW Magazine Online is published by Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Readers who wish to help bring safe drinking water to communities in need can support the ministry’s Safe Water Project. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law.
