Nairobi, 1 July 2026 – On Wednesday 24 June, the Kenyan Ministry of Finance officially launched the Disaster Risk Financing Strategy (DRFS) 2026–2030, a five-year strategic framework designed to strengthen the country’s financial resilience to natural and climate-related disasters. The AICS office in Nairobi attended the event, held at the Mövenpick Hotel in Westlands, expressing Italian Cooperation’s commitment to the bilateral partnership on disaster risk reduction.
The new strategy represents a significant shift in Kenya’s management model: moving from a predominantly reactive approach, based on post-emergency spending, to proactive planning informed by an understanding of risks. The stated aim is to improve the financial capacity of the central government and the 47 counties to manage risks from natural disasters throughout the entire disaster risk management (DRM) cycle, protecting vulnerable populations, safeguarding national development objectives and preserving fiscal stability.
‘This updated instrument enables Kenya to allocate funding specifically for risk anticipation before an emergency escalates into a crisis,’ emphasised Andrea Bollini, Humanitarian Programme Coordinator at the AICS office in Nairobi, speaking during the ceremony. The launch of the DRFS comes just a few days after the National Disaster Risk Management Act, 2026, came into force on 16 June. The new Act establishes the National Disaster Risk Management Authority (NDRMA), an autonomous authority with legal personality, which absorbs the existing structures of the National Disaster Operations Centre (NDOC) and the National Disaster Management Unit (NDMU). Furthermore, the new Act introduces the Disaster Risk Management Fund, whose operational procedures are now defined by the newly launched strategy.
The AICS Head Office’s participation forms part of the project “Strengthening early warning and early action systems in Kenya”, funded by Italian Cooperation with an investment of €1,500,000 allocated to UNDRR for the period 2024–2027. Activities include support for the establishment of Kenya’s National Operations Centre, drawing on technical assistance from the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) and the CIMA Foundation; the updating of the National Disaster Risk Profile with a focus on resilience; and the strengthening of interconnections between continental, regional and national Situation Rooms in Africa. During the launch event, the AICS office in Nairobi highlighted how the work supported by Italy since 2019 in the IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) region has laid the necessary infrastructural foundations to enable Kenya’s DRFS to operate effectively, thanks to reliable data, open data platforms and trained staff capable of using the tools at their disposal. The meeting was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Finance and the National Disaster Operations Centre of the Government of Kenya, the UNDRR Regional Office for Africa, the British High Commission in Kenya and the World Bank. The DRFS will remain in force until December 2030, with a mid-term review scheduled for the first half of 2029. Disaster risk reduction remains one of the fundamental pillars of Italian cooperation in Kenya, implemented in synergy with UNDRR to strengthen institutional early warning systems and aligned with the objectives of the Italy–Kenya bilateral cooperation strategy for 2023–2027.