Seybata sits cross-legged on a worn blue mat in a sun-dappled compound in Harobanda, a neighbourhood in Niger’s capital, Niamey. Her hands deftly stitch a large calico cloth, which she and a friend will use to cover a stack of salvaged items – a bed frame, cupboards, pots, and pans, all bearing the scars of water damage. The ground beneath them is dry and hard, belying the deluge that swept through the compound when catastrophic floods ravaged parts of Niamey and much of Niger between July and September. Her friend saved some of the belongings they are now trying to protect. Seybata, however, was not so lucky.
“I lost everything in the collapse,” says the 38-year-old Malian refugee and mother of seven. “I didn’t have time to empty the house before it fell. I just grabbed my children and got out.”
That evening, hurried footsteps and urgent voices filled the air as hundreds of people fled after men in the neighbourhood raised the alarm, asking everyone to escape because a nearby pond was overflowing its banks. Most of them took refuge in a primary school nearby. When Seybata returned the next day, the house that had been her home for the last four years was nothing but a pile of mud.
“I felt devasted and desperate, seeing the collapsed house. I had nowhere to go. It was very challenging for me,” she says.
About a thousand miles away in Cameroon’s Far North Region, 53-year-old Deborah Telet struggles to find a silver lining at the end of rain clouds that gathered. When the Logone Birni river overflowed its banks following days of persistent rainfall, Deborah who is responsible for nine children found herself literally neck-deep in the water. Her once-safe and vibrant village was now reachable only by hand-pulled canoes. Her children unable to attend school. She struggled even to feed them and was eventually forced to seek refuge in a temporary resettlement site called Goré.
“I must find food for them,” she says. “This is the first time I’ve known such suffering.”
In the aftermath of the floods, Deborah took up an unexpected role along the Kousseri-Logone Birni road — using a canoe to ferry stranded villagers. “Everyone is affected, so everyone helps,” she says.
Widespread devastation in many parts of West and Central Africa
Climate-induced torrential rains starting in June 2024 led to widespread devastation across West and Central Africa, with over 4.9 million people affected across Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Mali among them refugees and internally displaced persons, representing a shocking 485 per cent increase from 2023.
In Niger, it was the worst floods in 20 years, leading to the deaths of at least 391 people, affecting over 1.4 million others, including 9,000 refugees and many more internally displaced people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UNOCHA. The floods devasted infrastructure, including roads and farmland and disrupted the education of thousands of children.
In Cameroon’s Far North region, 38 people died, with the floods causing significant losses to livestock and property. In some areas particularly hit by the floods, bridges collapsed, and foodstuff in markets was left floating atop the waters. The deluge caused extensive damage to infrastructure and equipment at the Minawao Health Centers. Nearly 200,000 people were affected, including over 21,000 refugees.
With the scale of catastrophe beginning to emerge, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, responded quickly to help some of the most vulnerable persons affected. UNHCR worked with the Governments in all the countries to provide essential relief items, shelter kits and emergency cash transfers.
In Niamey, Seybata used the 65,000 CFA (about USD 105) she received to prioritize what was most important to her then: her children’s schooling.
“I didn’t want my children to leave school because of a lack of supplies. I left school in 5th grade because my parents couldn’t afford to buy my supplies, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to my children.
“It was an enormous relief for me. With this money, I was able to buy school supplies, uniforms, and food. Especially for my daughter, who is starting secondary school this year.”
She was also able to save up some money from the cash transfer to buy items needed to build a temporary shelter where her house once stood.
Rebuilding lives and livelihoods
At the end of September 2024, UNHCR declared a Level 1 emergency, mobilizing more resources to support governments responding to the crisis.
“The recent floods in Niger have had a devastating impact on tens of thousands of families, including refugees who have lost everything,” says UNHCR Niger’s Assistant Representative in charge of Operations, Patrice Dior.
“We mobilized quickly, working closely with authorities in Niamey, Maradi and other affected areas and with humanitarian partners to provide immediate relief, distributing essential items such as tarpaulins, blankets, and kitchen sets to some of the most vulnerable households.
“Additionally, we have assisted and continue to assist families through cash transfers, giving them the dignity to choose and prioritize what is most important for themselves at the moment.”
However, the challenges are immense, and the needs are far more significant than providing immediate relief. For many refugees and displaced people like Seybata, it was years of efforts to rebuild their lives and livelihoods that were washed away in a matter of hours.
In 2012, while pregnant but desperate to flee the violence engulfing the eastern Malian city of Gao, Seybata travelled over 400km mostly on foot to the Malian border town of Labzanga, exhausted and with no money, where a good Samaritan brought her to safety in Niamey in his car.
Over the next 12 years, she painstakingly put her life back together. Seybata considered herself on the verge of self-reliance after saving up to expand her small business of selling traditional cakes and snacks in Harobanda. But all her savings were used up in the aftermath of the floods, and she laments that she is now back to relying on assistance.
Seybata, Malian refugee, 38, stands in the middle of what was once her home. “I lost everything in the collapse. I didn’t have time to empty the house before it fell. I just grabbed my children and got out.” © UNHCR/Helen Ngoh “I am no longer running my business. How do I meet my needs and support my family? I want to get out of dependency,” she says.
Her dilemma is shared by several thousand people whose homes and livelihoods were lost in the deluge.
“We have provided shelter inputs and non-food items, but so much more is needed,” says Yvette Muhimpundu, the UNHCR Representative in Cameroon. “It is now time for a more proactive and sustained response, in line with the Government of Cameroon’s priorities.”
“The response so far has been for immediate relief, but there is a need for support in the long-term to help refugees and others affected by the floods rebuild their lives,” says Dior, echoing Muhimpundu. “Our goal is to provide immediate relief and support long-term recovery and resilience-building efforts, which requires additional resources.”
UNHCR is appealing for $10.6 million to address the immediate and medium-term needs of 228,000 flood-affected forcibly displaced people and host community members in Cameroon, Niger and the other affected countries in West and Central Africa.
But for Seybata, the floods, a stark reminder of the ongoing climate crisis, have stolen something too difficult to replace. The sense of community she once cherished has been shattered.
“In this neighbourhood, we lived in communities with Nigeriens, non-refugee Malians, and other refugees,” she says. “We got along very well in this neighbourhood; we helped each other, but the floods dispersed us. Some even moved away, and this community almost no longer exists.”
