Anticipatory action (AA) is deceptively simple: it is the practice of releasing pre-arranged funding and delivering assistance before a predictable disaster strikes, rather than scrambling to respond after the damage is done. It connects early warning systems — weather forecasts, drought indices, flood models — to pre-agreed plans and pre-committed money, so that when a trigger threshold is crossed, help moves automatically.

By Wahome Ngatia For decades, development funding worked like a