Over 20 West and East African countries have been hit by the worst flooding in 30 years, affecting over a million people, destroying food crops and spreading disease. Some of the worst floods are in those countries usually hit by drought; this points to the growing effects of global climate change on Africa’s ecosystems. Already some 300 people are reported to have died and meteorologists predict the flood waters will stay at the current level or rise until early November. Floods have driven 300,000 people from their homes in northern Ghana alone. From Ethiopia to Senegal, crop lands have been devastated and villages swept away, leaving in their place hunger and waterborne diseases. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change suggests a new cycle is emerging in some African regions of long droughts followed by thunderous floods that wash away arable land and devastate settlements. In countries, such as Burkina Faso, Niger and Sudan, floods are followed by locusts, compounding the damage to crops and to livestock. Most African states have little capacity to manage floods, let alone forecast them. For farmers, predictability can be more valuable than precipitation. East Africa often has floods at this time of year; West Africa does not. Some argue that shows equatorial oceans are evaporating faster, sending wetter clouds inland to release the torrential rains that may return next week.