El Niño Warning: What A ‘Potentially Historic’ Event Means For African Farmers
On the weather charts in Brussels, a vast red smear is spreading across the tropical Pacific. That stain of heat, far from any field of maize or sorghum, is the early signature of what scientists now say is a virtually certain El Niño – and one that could become very strong, perhaps beyond anything recorded.
In a new report released on 15 June 2026, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) warns that this incoming El Niño is likely to intensify droughts, floods, heat, and storms across much of the globe through 2026 and into 2027. For southern Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists, the message is blunt: use the warning window now.
Based on June 2026 seasonal forecasts feeding into the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the JRC finds that an El Niño this year is “virtually certain”. Looking at how it might evolve, the event has a “very high likelihood” of being very strong and could even enter unprecedented territory.
What Exactly Is El Niño – And Why Should Farmers Care?
Every few years, the tropical Pacific Ocean flips between two opposite states. In its warm phase, El Niño, a large surface area becomes unusually hot. In the cool phase, La Niña, the same region turns colder than normal. Those temperature swings drive changes in wind, clouds, and storms across the world.
FFA Explainer:
El Niño is a natural climate pattern linked to warming of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It disrupts normal rainfall and temperature patterns worldwide – bringing drought to some regions and heavy rain to others. For farmers, it means that “average” seasons become less likely and extremes more common.
For 2026–27, the JRC report maps out several possible El Niño intensity scenarios. Across all of them, one message is consistent: climate impacts will be felt well into 2027 and may linger even after the ocean itself begins to cool.
Heat, Drought, And Downpours: Where The Impacts Will Hit
From September 2026, extreme heat is expected to build across the tropics and subtropics, peaking between December 2026 and February 2027 and lasting into spring 2027. Unusually warm weather is likely to spread across much of the world, intensifying as El Niño strengthens.
The regions flagged by the JRC include:
- North and South America
- Central America
- Africa
- The Euro‑Asian continent
- Australia
For southern Africa and the wider African tropics, the concern is two‑sided: severe heat and heightened drought risk in some areas, and damaging excess rainfall in others.
The JRC report states that El Niño is expected to increase drought risk in large regions of:
- Australia,
- South‑East Asia,
- Southern Africa, and
- Central America,
with similar risk forecast for the Sahel and the Indian subcontinent as the event intensifies.
On the flip side, East Africa, parts of Central and East Asia, and large areas of both South and North America are projected to receive more rainfall. Yet heavier rains will not automatically bring better harvests.
Where soils are degraded or already saturated, heavy downpours increase erosion, wash away nutrients, and can waterlog roots. Low‑lying fields in Rwanda, northern Tanzania, Kenya, and eastern DR Congo – already sensitive to intense rainfall – could face landslides and crop damage if the skies open too hard and too fast.
Humanitarian Risks Rise, Especially In Conflict Zones
El Niño does not hit a blank slate. It overlays existing conflicts, displacement, and food insecurity. To understand how these layers might combine, the JRC used INFORM Warning, a new tool that merges hazard forecasts with data on conflict, food security, displacement, and economic conditions to produce country‑level risk scores.
FFA Explainer:
INFORM Warning is part of the INFORM suite of risk tools. It brings together early warnings for hazards like drought and flood with information on where people are already vulnerable – due to conflict, hunger, or poverty – to flag where crises could worsen in the coming months.
For many countries in Central Africa, INFORM Warning already points to high humanitarian risks over the next six months. These states face ongoing conflict, mass displacement, and severe food insecurity. El Niño is expected to make those conditions worse.
Together with Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Chad, several Central African countries hold some of the highest warning levels globally, according to INFORM Warning.
Beyond Africa, the report highlights Ecuador, Venezuela, and Haiti as three cases where projected dry conditions will pile onto serious pre‑existing crises, raising the likelihood of humanitarian deterioration.
Food Prices On A Knife Edge
From a village field in Matabeleland to a trading floor in Chicago, El Niño’s fingerprints on agriculture are global. The JRC analysis, using its Anomaly Hotspots of Agricultural Production system to assess crop conditions, warns that productivity impacts are likely in large swathes of:
- Sub‑Saharan Africa,
- India and the wider Indian subcontinent,
- China,
- Australia, and
- Brazil.
The 2026–27 El Niño is expected to push global food prices in different directions depending on where each crop is grown and how intense the event becomes. According to the JRC:
- Durum wheat prices are a major concern, with global prices predicted to rise sharply as El Niño intensifies.
- Maize prices may rise slightly, although how they respond to a very strong El Niño remains uncertain.
- Global soybean and Hard Red winter wheat prices are projected to decline across all El Niño scenarios.
- Rice shows a more complex pattern – a slight early price decline followed by an increase later on.
For African import‑dependent countries, higher durum wheat or rice prices could strain budgets, while shifts in maize markets will matter for both food security and feed costs. The report also cautions that in its most extreme scenario, model projections move beyond any historical precedent, which adds uncertainty.
Displacement: The Invisible Drought Migration
Predicting exactly how many people will be forced to move is notoriously difficult. Past El Niño events triggered different displacement patterns depending on local politics, economic buffers, and social ties.
The JRC underlines that data on drought‑related displacement are still limited. So is information on those who are forced to stay put – families too poor or constrained to move even as crops fail and water sources dry up. That “trapped population” may be one of the most invisible risks of the 2026 event.
The report concludes that the 2026–27 El Niño will layer on top of existing displacement, conflicts, and food insecurity, raising the risk of re‑displacement among people already uprooted in East and Central Africa, the Central American Dry Corridor, and parts of South and South‑East Asia.
How Scientists Are Reading The Future
To explore what a very strong – or even unprecedented – El Niño could look like, the JRC combined two scientific approaches.
- A millennium‑long earth‑system simulation run under pre‑industrial conditions, which provides a rich “library” of El Niño‑like events in a world without human‑driven climate change.
- Seasonal forecasting systems that contribute to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, offering up‑to‑date projections based on current ocean and atmosphere observations.
Drought conditions are monitored through the European and Global Drought Observatories, flood risks via the Global Flood Awareness System, and population exposure using the Global Human Settlement Layer. Agricultural hotspots come from the JRC’s own anomaly monitoring, while humanitarian risk blends into the INFORM Warning tool.
Together, these systems build an integrated, multi‑hazard picture that can support anticipatory action – acting before the worst impacts fully unfold.
Why This Warning Window Matters For Africa
El Niño is one of the world’s most predictable climate phenomena. That predictability is its hidden gift. Governments, relief agencies, and farmers get a lead time measured in months, not days.
For Africa’s agricultural ministries and disaster agencies, the JRC report is an early exam paper. It poses clear, if uncomfortable, questions:
- How quickly can strategic grain reserves be audited and, where needed, topped up?
- Can national social safety nets scale up cash or food support in likely hotspots?
- Are extension services briefing farmers on drought‑tolerant varieties, staggered planting, and soil‑moisture conservation?
- Where might flood risks call for early clearing of drainage, reinforcement of riverbanks, or temporary relocation plans?
Zimbabwe’s own National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) commits the country to building resilience in agriculture and social protection. A potentially historic El Niño is exactly the kind of stress test those promises are made for.
What Smallholders Can Do – And What They Cannot
No communal farmer in Gokwe, Chivi, or Chiredzi can shift the Pacific Ocean. Yet, with timely information and support, they can tilt the odds in their favour.
In drought‑prone districts of southern Zimbabwe and across southern Africa, some practical steps – adapted to local advice – may include:
- Favouring short‑season, drought‑tolerant crops and varieties where possible.
- Staggering planting dates to spread risk if rains start late or stop early.
- Improving mulching and minimum tillage to conserve soil moisture and reduce erosion.
- Investing, where feasible, in small water harvesting structures to capture runoff from any intense storms.
- Exploring climate‑smart herd management for pastoralists, including early destocking if grazing forecasts look poor.
In areas expecting heavier rains, the priorities shift:
- Ensuring drainage channels are clear around homesteads and fields.
- Avoiding planting in flood‑prone low spots where crops are easily waterlogged.
- Planting grasses or trees on slopes to cut erosion from intense downpours.
Yet many of these measures demand resources and information that smallholders often lack. That is where governments, farmers’ unions, and development partners must step up, with tailored weather updates, input support, and early‑action financing.
Women, Youth, And The Frontlines Of Response
When El Niño‑linked drought or flood hits, women and young people in rural areas tend to feel the strain first and longest. Women often walk further for water, juggle food rationing, and keep children in school or pull them out when fees cannot be met. Youth, especially young men, are the first to migrate in search of cash work.
Early warning, therefore, must translate into early support where it matters most:
- Cash‑for‑work programmes focused on water harvesting, soil conservation, and rangeland rehabilitation, prioritising women and youth employment.
- Targeted grants or low‑interest credit for climate‑smart inputs and small irrigation kits.
- School feeding programmes that shield children from the worst nutritional shocks when harvests fail.
These interventions do not just manage a single season. Done well, they build skills, assets, and confidence that carry over into more stable years.
The OceanEye On El Niño – And Why Data Matters
Behind the forecasts sits a quieter European effort called OceanEye, the EU’s initiative to strengthen ocean observation and intelligence. OceanEye aims to better integrate observing systems, data services, and digital tools, and to mobilise long‑term investment in ocean monitoring.
Its International Alliance for the Global Ocean Observing System works to keep global networks of buoys, satellites, and ships operating. These networks are essential for tracking the ocean conditions that drive El Niño and other large‑scale patterns, and for improving early warnings of their knock‑on effects on food security, water resources, and ecosystems worldwide.
For African countries, even those far from the sea, this is not remote science. It is part of the information chain that tells a farmer in Nkayi or Nkhata Bay whether to risk planting long‑season maize or to hedge with a shorter variety and some legumes.
From Distant Pacific To Local Field
In the coming months, the Pacific will keep warming, computer models will refresh, and the JRC and its partners will refine their projections. The emerging picture already has clear strokes: hotter conditions, shifting rains, heightened humanitarian risks.
On a field outside Gwanda or Chiredzi, that translates into a very practical question: if you knew the coming season was more likely to bring heat and drought, what would you change now?
El Niño gives Africa that rare luxury in climate risk – time to think, plan, and act before the storm, or the silence, arrives. Whether that time is used well will shape not just the 2026–27 harvests, but the confidence of farmers who must keep planting in a world where the ocean’s mood, half a world away, can make or break their year.
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