The Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, Mr Alex Kakooza, has urged stakeholders to move beyond responding after disasters occur and increasingly anticipate risks to act early and reduce their impact.
“We now have improved access to forecasts, risk information and vulnerability assessments. The critical question is how we translate this information into timely decisions and effective action,” he said.
“This requires clear institutional mandates, agreed triggers and thresholds, defined responsibilities, rapid decision-making mechanisms and predictable financing,” he added.
Mr Kakooza made the remarks at the opening of a two-day dialogue on implementation of the recently launched Anticipatory Action Roadmap in Entebbe on Wednesday, aimed at shifting the country’s approach from responding to crises after they occur to taking early, forecast-based action before disasters strike.
He said there is need to localise anticipatory action to ensure it reaches communities most exposed to risk, while equipping local governments with capacity, resources and information to take timely action.
“Strengthening collaboration among government, development and humanitarian partners, research institutions, civil society, the private sector and communities, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities,” he said.
“Ensuring that resources are available before disasters occur, including through domestic financing, sector and local government budgets, and complementary financing mechanisms from partners,” he added.
The World Food Programme deputy country director, Mr Marcus Prior, said Uganda needs to move from pilots and projects to institutionalised systems that are nationally owned, sustainably financed and able to operate predictably and at scale.
“Uganda has already demonstrated significant leadership through the development of anticipatory action systems, strengthening of early warning capacities, activation of anticipatory action in Karamoja, the development of flood anticipatory action plans for the southwest and its commitment to multi-stakeholder coordination,” he said.
Mr Prior urged partners to strengthen their readiness for the coming rainy season and carry a strong Ugandan voice to the 2nd Eastern Africa Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Action in Mombasa next month.
“Together we can transform risk into resilience and make anticipatory action a standard and sustainable approach to protecting vulnerable communities,” he said.
The Food and Agriculture Organization representative in Uganda, Mr Ezana Kassa, said acting early will protect lives, safeguard livelihoods and reduce the costs of disasters in the country which faces growing climate risks, from drought to floods and landslides.
Uganda Red Cross Society Secretary General Naphtal Baguma said there is need to move from forecast to action, but warned that early warning without sustainable financing cannot be achievable.
“Early warning that doesn’t lead to early action is an unfinished promise, an early action without predictable financing can’t become a sustainable action,” Mr Baguma said.
“We must strengthen the connection between science and communities. We need to be predictable, flexible, and help determine financing arrangements. We must invest in localisation, communities are not merely beneficiaries of early warning actions and systems, they are first responders,” he said.
“We must measure our success differently, success should not only be how many people we reach after a disaster, increasingly, success must also be measured by how much suffering never happened when we acted early,” he added.