Mama Medina stands beside the rubble of what was once her home in Somalia’s Beledweyne and wonders where the US $1,000 she needs to rebuild her life will come from.
Where walls once stood, only cracked earth and scattered debris remain. Once full of livestock, her pen now holds just a few survivors of the 2023 floods that wiped out 80% of the city.
“The entire compound was destroyed,” she tells TRT Afrika, pointing at the collapsed structures all around after yet another climate-induced disaster.
Her story resonates across Somalia, a nation vacillating between two extremes – drought that scorches and floods that drown.
The land, once abundant, now cracks beneath bare feet. Crops wither away in the heat of one season and rot as abnormally high rainfall bears down on the region.
When in spate, the Shabelle river turns from a symbol of life into a reservoir of torment.
"This overflowing, muddy channel, which originates in Ethiopia, took away everything we had – our livestock, our farms, our homes," says Mohamed Adow, part of a growing tribe of climate refugees paying the price for the ecological depredations of a world far removed from theirs.
The only thing that keeps the people of this region going is their resilience. Every time something like this happens, they resist, get back on their feet, and rebuild.
Epicentre of destruction
Beledweyne, a city that gets flooded year after year, has become the symbol of climate-linked catastrophe.
By late 2023, 80% of the city was under water, forcing thousands to flee.
Residents recall that such flooding occurred maybe once a decade before climate change altered the pattern and frequency of devastation.
A visit to one of the flood-ravaged settlements along with an African Union peacekeeping team reveals wreckage and unspoken angst and worry.
Saney Mumin, 58, speaks of how each drought is worse than the previous one. "I have experienced the horrors of drought, but this heat isn’t normal. This is something else,” he tells TRT Afrika.
His five children have grown up not knowing what stable rainfall is like. They have never had enough milk to drink or have regular meals.
The sorghum, maize and sesame that once fed rural communities now barely take root. Pastoral life has all but vanished, with granaries emptied and herds lost.
"I never imagined I would be a climate refugee in my country," says Saney, who survived famine in 1991-92 and 2011.
When the rains arrived this month, they didn’t provide relief from the drought. The only thing that changed was the source of nature’s fury.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that at least 17 people were killed in extreme flooding, and more than 84,000 others were affected across Somalia.
The hardest-hit regions included Southwest State, Puntland and the Shabelle regions, where homes were destroyed, roads were washed away, and farmland ready for harvest was reduced to mud flats.
In Banadir, northeast of the capital city of Mogadishu, floodwaters destroyed six critical roads, killed nine people and displaced 24,000 residents.
Emergency responders described the area as "inaccessible" for days, with communities stranded and water supply cut off.
These extreme climate events came on the heels of erratic rainfall in 2024, which had already reduced harvests by 45% and accelerated the depletion of pastures and water sources.
As a humanitarian worker on the ground put it, "The rains used to mean food. Now they mean funerals."
Teeming refugee shelters
Somali herdsmen and women who prided themselves on the pastoral way of life are forced to spend days in camps for internally displaced people (IDP), washing clothes, sweeping streets, and looking for menial work in Mogadishu.
In these makeshift polyethene homes, their children battle malnutrition and disease.
The country’s youth, already up against one of the highest unemployment rates in the world – over 70% among those aged 14 to 29 – struggle to find hope amid despair.
According to recent data from the International Organisation for Migration, youth in this easternmost African country of 18.1 million people account for 33% of the displaced population.
Ahmed Sharif Aden, a camp leader, remembers a different Somalia – a country where families had fresh produce, schools were alive with the chatter of children, and a modicum of stability.
"It's not that the schools have shut and the teachers are missing; it's the children. They have been forced to flee with their families to escape the climate horrors. Survival has replaced school. Hunger has replaced hope,” he tells TRT Afrika.
Massive economic dent
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), livestock once comprised more than half of Somalia's total export earnings. The climate crisis has shattered this backbone.
Repeated displacement – over 3.2 million people, or 18% of Somalia’s population – has added to the losses caused by cattle perishing en masse during the cycles of flooding and drought over the past six years.
OCHA reports that over a quarter of the population will require humanitarian assistance in 2025. Ironically, the UN and its partners have been forced to slash their aid target by 70% from 4.6 million people to just 1.3 million. The corresponding budget has dropped from $1.4 billion to $367 million.
So, what is left when a nation loses its climate, economy, and supposedly its future? Resilience. Dignity. A voice that refuses to be silenced. Somalia's story is no longer just a local crisis. It’s a mirror. A warning. A call.
"We did not choose this," says Saney. "But we are here. Still here."
Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister, Salah Ahmed Jama, says a strategy reboot is perhaps the way out of the crisis.
"We have over 61 million livestock and fertile land. Somalia can feed itself, albeit not without water," Jama explains. "This isn't a passing crisis. It's a permanent shift. What we need now is sustained adaptation and water infrastructure to match our agricultural potential."
Jama also points out that Somalia's food insecurity is down to ecological mismanagement elsewhere.
"Food insecurity is as dangerous to Somalia as terrorism. But this crisis is not of Somalia's making," says the Deputy Prime Minister. "Africa contributes the least to global emissions, yet we suffer the most."
