I've been following the news about drought in the Sahel and I keep seeing more and more reports of towns running out of water. My cousin works for an NGO in Senegal and says the situation keeps getting worse. What's actually happening with the climate in that region?
The Sahel has been losing rainfall consistently since the 1960s, and that's what's accelerating the desertification. Your cousin probably sees how the drought cycles are getting more intense and the rainy seasons arrive late or are shorter, which leaves people without water for their livestock and crops. Climate change is intensifying this, but there are also local factors like overgrazing and deforestation that make everything worse. The combination of less predictable rainfall plus human pressure on the land is what makes the problem grow so fast.
What doesn't get mentioned as much is that beyond the missing rainfall, the soil itself is degrading from overgrazing and deforestation, so even if more water fell, the land no longer retains it well - it's a vicious cycle that gets worse with each drought. Your cousin is probably seeing how entire communities have to migrate because they couldn't recover in the coming decades even if the climate improved.
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