Writer: Leader Kwami Makumator (Country Director, ForAfrika South Sudan)
As the world commemorates World Humanitarian Day, South Sudan presents a compelling challenge to the global humanitarian and development system: why do we continue to wait for predictable crises to become emergencies before financing action?
In a country where climate shocks, food insecurity, and displacement are increasingly foreseeable, the future of humanitarian action will depend not only on how effectively we respond to crises but also on how early we act to prevent them.
Over the years, the humanitarian community has built considerable experience in responding when crises strike. When crops fail, food assistance reaches affected families. When floods displace communities, shelter and essential services are mobilised. When malnutrition rises, treatment expands. And when livelihoods collapse, cash assistance helps families meet urgent needs.
Yet as donor resources come under increasing pressure and climate-related shocks become more frequent, a system designed primarily to respond after disaster strikes is no longer enough. The opportunity now is to complement strong response capacity with anticipatory action, using forecasts, local knowledge, and flexible financing to protect lives and livelihoods before predictable shocks become full-scale emergencies.
South Sudan makes this conversation urgent. We know when the lean season is approaching. Early-warning systems can identify emerging drought risks. Recurrent flooding patterns are increasingly documented. Food prices, displacement, conflict, and poor harvests all provide signals that household vulnerability is intensifying. The question is whether financing can move as quickly as the information.
Today, 7.8 million people in South Sudan face high levels of acute food insecurity, while more than 2.2 million children under five are acutely malnourished. Conflict, economic pressures, climate shocks, and wider regional instability continue to compound these challenges. Lifesaving humanitarian assistance therefore remains indispensable. But these pressures also strengthen the case for investing earlier, wherever credible information allows us to act before needs escalate.
From early warning to early action
In July, the World Food Programme and the Government of South Sudan activated the country’s first-ever drought anticipatory-action plan, targeting more than 65,000 people in Budi and Kapoeta North counties.
Instead of waiting for drought conditions to deteriorate further, forecasts were used to trigger cash assistance and early-warning information intended to help households protect food security and livelihoods.
This represents an important shift. It should be seen as evidence that a different model is possible, one that rewards prevention rather than repeatedly paying for recovery.
Rather than asking only, “How do we respond when communities enter crisis?” We must increasingly ask, “What can we do now to reduce the likelihood of households reaching that point?”
A farmer who receives drought-tolerant seed before planting season has a better chance of protecting production. A pastoralist with timely information about rainfall and water availability can make more informed decisions about livestock. A household receiving cash before purchasing power deteriorates may avoid selling productive assets. These interventions are often far less costly than responding after livelihoods have already been lost.
Anticipatory action does not replace emergency response. It strengthens it.
Development financing must catch up
The challenge is not a lack of information. It is a lack of financing mechanisms that can consistently act on that information.
Governments, researchers, humanitarian organisations and development partners have invested significantly in improving early-warning systems. We can increasingly monitor rainfall, drought, crop performance, food prices, displacement, nutrition trends, and market pressures. Yet too often, funding is released only after livelihoods have already been damaged and communities have crossed into crisis.
In effect, we have modern forecasting systems operating within financing structures that were built for a more reactive era.
At ForAfrika, we see every day how food security, health, water, education, climate resilience, and economic opportunity are interconnected. Lasting progress rarely comes from addressing one challenge in isolation. This is why we advance our proprietary model, the Dynamic Development Continuum, an approach that challenges the traditional divide between humanitarian relief and long-term development. Communities do not experience their lives in silos, and development financing should not be structured that way.
The Dynamic Development Continuum recognises that communities move through cycles of vulnerability, crisis, recovery, resilience, and growth. Financing must therefore be flexible enough to meet immediate humanitarian needs while simultaneously investing in long-term solutions that reduce future vulnerability.
We see this in communities across South Sudan that have endured repeated flooding and displacement. With sustained support, farmers who once depended on food assistance are rebuilding livelihoods, producing crops, generating income, and contributing to local food systems. What begins as a humanitarian intervention can create a pathway to resilience when investment continues beyond the emergency phase.
This is the essence of the Dynamic Development Continuum: supporting families through crisis while helping them move toward self-reliance and opportunity.
In practice, this means investing in resilient agriculture, water infrastructure, education, livelihoods, shock-responsive social protection, and local systems before shocks occur, not only after they have devastated communities.
When funding arrives only after crops have failed, livestock have perished, and households have exhausted their savings, recovery becomes harder and significantly more expensive.
By contrast, flexible and multi-year financing can release resources when agreed-upon risk thresholds are reached, helping communities absorb shocks before they become crises. ,
A new measure of success
Not every emergency can be predicted or prevented. But drought, seasonal hunger, recurrent flooding, and other extreme weather-related shocks increasingly provide opportunities for earlier action.
South Sudan therefore offers an important lesson for the global development community. Success should continue to be measured by how effectively we save lives during emergencies. But it should also be measured by how successfully we prevent predictable crises from escalating in the first place.
The future of humanitarian action cannot be defined solely by how quickly we respond after disaster strikes. It must also be defined by how effectively we connect forecasts, financing, and action to help communities withstand shocks before they become emergencies.
The most sustainable humanitarian intervention is the one that prevents a family from needing humanitarian assistance at all. South Sudan’s first drought-anticipatory action initiative points us in that direction. Now the international development financing system must evolve to do the same, investing across the full continuum from crisis response to resilience and long-term development.