The people most at risk are the 300,000 mainly Somali refugees in the Kakuma and Dadaab camps.  Kakuma is in northwestern Kenya and Dadaab in the east on the border with Somalia.   The overcrowded Dadaab complex of three camps was built to hold some 90,000 people but its population has swollen to three times that, in the process becoming home to more refugees than any other site in the world, according to the UNHCR.

U.N. aid agencies have activated contingency plans, bringing food, water treatment chemicals and mosquito nets to flood-prone areas.  The flooding, which follows on from a period of drought, is also bringing disease in its wake – the WHO is reporting that cholera has already infected 10,000 people this year in Kenya.

Elsewhere in Kenya, hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes in the central part of the country after mudslides, brought on by the heavy rain, destroyed houses.

During her day-long visit, Jolie visited one of the three camps that together host around 285,000 refugees. She met a number of families including a mother just arrived in the camp, after walking for days with her three young children to flee war-torn Somalia.

Like the West African floods commented on below, the ongoing war and displacement of people in Somalia is one of those African disasters that is going on below the radar of the general public in the West.

The country is also going through its worst drought for ten years yet, ironically, there is also flooding expected shortly in parts of the country – classic symptoms of the mix of extreme weather events that global warming brings.

Speaking to CNN, Robbert Van den Berg, a spokesman for Oxfam International in the Horn of Africa said, “Somalis flee one of the world’s most brutal conflicts and a desperate drought, only to end up in unimaginable conditions in camps that are barely fit for humans.  Hundreds of thousands of children are affected, and the world is abandoning the next generation of Somalis when they most need our help. Why does it seem like you matter less in this world if you are from Somalia?”

Oxfam accused the international community of failing the refugees, who have little access to basic services such as water and medicine.  It added that about 8,000 Somali refugees flock into the Dadaab camp in northern Kenya every month – the camp, which has facilities for about 90,000, is currently housing 280,000 refugees who have no access to basic necessities, including clean water.